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When it was known that he had bought an old castle at Pontassieve on the banks of the Arno, his reputation still further increased. He was now so prosperous that he set the faculty at defiance. He proclaimed that they were jealous of his profounder learning, and threatened to expose the banefulness of their systems.
A mile beyond the town, on the Via Aretina, the road of the Consuma Pass leaves the highway on the left, and by this way it is good to go into Casentino; for any of the inns in the towns of the valley will send to Pontassieve to meet you, and it is better to enter thus than by railway from Arezzo. However, I was for Vallombrosa; so I kept to the Aretine way.
Here, in this napkin, is everything requisite to make Santa Caterina de' Ricci the happiest of dead ladies as, portraits of her mother, of her mother's sisters, of her father and all his relatives, of the young man who drowned himself at Pontassieve for her love, and of that other young man who, on the contrary, did not, but made himself a priest and became her spiritual director.
Steady climbing now, and then a turn to the right and we see Pelago before us, perched on its crags, and by and by come to it a tiny town, with a clean and alluring inn, very different from the squalor of Pontassieve: famous in art and particularly Florentine art as being the birthplace of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who made the Baptistery doors.
The Certosa A Company of Uncles The Cells Machiavelli Impruneta The della Robbias Pontassieve Pelago Milton's simile Vallombrosa S. Gualberto Prato and the Lippis The Grassina Albergo An American invasion The Procession of the Dead Christ My loss.
So I came to Pontassieve, crossing the river again where the road begins to leave it. There is nothing good to say of Pontassieve, which has no beauty in itself, and where folk are rough and given to robbery. A glance at the inn for so they call it and I passed on, glad in my heart that I had dined in the fields.
Here and there a white villa is seen, but for the most part this is peasants' district: one such villa on the left, before Pontassieve, having about it, and on each side of its drive, such cypresses as one seldom sees and only Gozzoli or Mr. Sargent could rightly paint, each in his own style.
It is not improbable that Lodovico Buonarroti and his wife Francesca approached it from Pontassieve in Valdarno, crossing the little pass of Consuma, descending on the famous battle-field of Campaldino, and skirting the ancient castle of the Conti Guidi at Poppi. Every step in the romantic journey leads over ground hallowed by old historic memories.
"Li ruscelletti, che dei verdi colli Del Casentin discendon giuso in Arno." And the path lies through the woods. You make your way under the mountain towards S. Miniato in Alpe, leaving it at Villa del Lago for a mule-track, which leads you at last to Consuma and the road from Pontassieve. The way is beautiful, and not too hard to find, the world about you a continual joy.
At Pontassieve we stopped a while for coffee at an inn at the corner of the square of pollarded limes, and while it was preparing watched the little crumbling town at work, particularly the cooper opposite, who was finishing a massive cask within whose recesses good Chianti is doubtless now maturing; and then on the white road again, to the turning, a mile farther on, to the left, where one bids the Arno farewell till the late afternoon.
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