It had thundered and rained since morning. The day died out in an orange glow which filtered through the hedges on the road outside and fell through the door of the church, gilding, as though with the softness of a vision, the groups of tired people. It rested with a wonderful radiance on the faded fresco above the chapel where we sat.[130]
In all the country round, it would have been difficult to find a scene more steeped in the spirit of pastoral Umbria than this one: the half-ruined church, the graceful tired people, the thin priests, and the faded fresco of Perugino; the whole saved from squalor by the splendour of the sunlight on the land outside the door.
We opened a book which we had carried with us on our journey and read the following lines:
"Oh! qui nous délivrera du mal de science! N'est-ce point folie d'avoir étouffé à grand peine tous les meilleurs instincts de notre être, pour obéir à la mode du jour et nous faire une âme critique! Adieu les beaux enthousiasmes! On n'ose plus aimer la vérité d'aujourd'hui depuis qu'on ne sait jamais qu'elle sera celle de demain! Il y, a des erreurs dont on ne peut se consoler. Quelle pitié de s'être prosterné tant de fois avec toutes les tendresses de son âme croyante devant un escalier vermoulu que des moines trompeurs exhibaient depuis des siècles comme ayant abrité la sainte pénitence d'un saint Alexis qui n'a jamais existé! Ne donnons plus jamais notre coeur à la vérité! Promenons sur les choses et les hommes l'eternel sourire de notre indifférence moqueuse. C'est là qu' est le plaisir et le charme de la saine critique. Tout sera parfait quand les histoires commenceront et finiront par ce gai refrain _Chi lo sa_."[131]
_Chi lo sa._--The words brought up before our eyes a host of images: hedges and fields, woods and plains, green with the green of the May-time: white roads and poppy fields, the oak woods under Trevi, the ilex groves of Spoleto, the long low lines of shining Trasimene, the marshy shores of Chiusi; and still more fair and more romantic, the cool green stream of the Clitumnus flowing beneath the pagan temple of a Roman river god.... That was the vision we had learned to love and know, with no attempt to criticise, and it was all composed of natural things. Dimly in the past we saw another vision: our study at Perugia. Piles and piles of manuscripts were there; books and maps, and guides, pamphlets, chronicles and histories--the records of men's doings, one and all.