CHAPTER VII

I AM MISCONCEIVED AT THE HOSPITAL

I am conscious that the reader may find much to condemn in my last chapter.  He may think my schemes chimerical, my methods undisciplined; he may say that I am perverse.  I shall only urge in defence of what I did that I deeply loved, and had deeply injured, the lovely Aurelia.  She had departed from me in misunderstanding and anger; she did not believe in my devotion, she could not understand my behaviour.  Was it surprising, then, if I felt that I must find her at all costs?  Was it wonderful that I wished her to know of my repentance, or that I wished to repair my wrong-doings?  For eight months I had enjoyed daily and hourly communion with her—­and I don’t pretend to say that the horrible loss of that had a good deal to do with my precipitate departure, any more than that the hope of finding her was what gave the spring to my feet and brought back the young blood to my heart.  No pilgrim to Loretto or Compostella more longingly set his eyes to where he believed his hopes to lie than did I watch for the first sign of the Apennines, which barred my way to Siena.  Having thus briefly defended myself against misconception, I shall say no more on that head.

After my first night under the stars—­wondrous night of wakefulness and hopeful music, throughout which I lay entranced at the foot of a wooded hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and firefly—­I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul, is no remedy, or very little.  Crossing the hills, over burning roads, through thorny brakes or by slopes of harsh grass, my heels and the balls of my toes became alarmingly inflamed; and an acacia-spine, lodging in the sole of one foot, made matters no better.  That second day of mine I could barely hobble twelve miles, and nothing but resolution could do that much for me.  The night came and found me ill; I slept not; though I had provided myself with food, I could not touch it.  Luckily, I was discovered by some shepherd boys early in the morning and directed to the town of Rovigo at some half a league’s distance, where they said there was a hospital.

Seeing that my foot was now so bad that the touch of a hand upon it was torment, I think it had gone hard with me if Rovigo had stood another half-league away.  I shall not readily forget the noble charity of one of those boys, who, seeing the inflammation set up by the thorn in my foot, ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and bound it round the instep—­my first experience of the magnanimity of the poor, but by no means my last.

I limped into Rovigo and learned the direction of the hospital, at whose gate I was kept with a sorry crew of wretches for a mortal hour while the brother-in-charge finished his siesta.