My baby saw mountains when he first looked forward into the world.  RIETI,—­not only an old classic town of Italy, but one founded by what are now called the Aborigines,—­is a hive of very ancient dwellings with red brown roofs, a citadel and several towers.  It is in a plain, twelve miles in diameter one way, not much less the other, and entirely encircled with mountains of the noblest form.  Casinos and hermitages gleam here and there on their lower slopes.  This plain is almost the richest in Italy, and full of vineyards.  Rieti is near the foot of the hills on one side, and the rapid Velino makes almost the circuit of its walls, on its way to Terni.  I had my apartment shut out from the family, on the bank of this river, and saw the mountains, as I lay on my restless couch.  There was a piazza, too, or, as they call it here, a loggia, which hung over the river, where I walked most of the night, for I could not sleep at all in those months.  In the wild autumn storms, the stream became a roaring torrent, constantly lit up by lightning flashes, and the sound of its rush was very sublime.  I see it yet, as it swept away on its dark green current the heaps of burning straw which the children let down from the bridge.  Opposite my window was a vineyard, whose white and purple clusters were my food for three months.  It was pretty to watch the vintage,—­the asses and wagons loaded with this wealth of amber and rubies,—­the naked boys, singing in the trees on which the vines are trained, as they cut the grapes,—­the nut-brown maids and matrons, in their red corsets and white head-clothes, receiving them below, while the babies and little children were frolicking in the grass.

In Rieti, the ancient Umbrians were married thus.  In presence of friends, the man and maid received together the gifts of fire and water; the bridegroom then conducted to his house the bride.  At the door, he gave her the keys, and, entering, threw behind him nuts, as a sign that he renounced all the frivolities of boyhood.

I intend to write all that relates to the birth of Angelino, in a little book, which I shall, I hope, show you sometime.  I have begun it, and then stopped;—­it seemed to me he would die.  If he lives, I shall finish it, before the details are at all faded in my mind.  Rieti is a place where I should have liked to have him born, and where I should like to have him now,—­but that the people are so wicked.  They are the most ferocious and mercenary population of Italy.  I did not know this, when I went there, and merely expected to be solitary and quiet among poor people.  But they looked on the “Marchioness” as an ignorant Inglese, and they fancy all Inglesi have wealth untold.  Me they were bent on plundering in every way.  They made me suffer terribly in the first days.

[Footnote A:  The first part of this chapter is edited by R.W.E.; the remainder by W.H.C.]

[Footnote B:  Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.]