Oh, but it was worth it!
We had a drive of fourteen miles through hills and villages, and
castellated villas with gardens shut in by formidably high walls--always,
a charm: a garden should always have something of the jealous seclusion of
a harem. I am getting Italian landscape into my system, and enjoy it more
and more.
Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down
parts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron of
cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a
bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye ways
bristling with agitated horns.
The cathedral is little and good: damaged, of course, wherever the last
three centuries have laid hands on it. At the corner of the west front
is an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over its
head. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite
round or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priest
coming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and
ugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-down
beggars, who are most decoratively devotional.
We tried to model our exit on a brigand-beggar who came in to ask
permission to murder one of his enemies. He got his request granted at
one of the side-altars (some strictly local Madonna, I imagine), and his
gratitude as he departed was quite touching.
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