Near Piotta I
met the whole village dragging a large tree; there were many men and
women dragging at it, but they had to pull hard, and they were silent; as
I passed them I thought what comely, well-begotten people they were.
Then, looking up, there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue,
against which the snow-clad mountains stood out splendidly. No one will
regret a walk in these valleys during the depth of winter. But I should
have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness, as the
old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at her window; or
again, I should like to see how things would look from this same window
on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow has fallen heavily and the
sky is murky and much darker than the earth. When the storm is at its
height, the snow must search and search and search even through the
double windows with which the houses are protected. It must rest upon
the frames of the pictures of saints, and of the sisters "grab," and of
the last hours of Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of the parlour. No
wonder there is a _S. Maria della Neve_,--a "St. Mary of the Snow;" but I
do wonder that she has not been painted.
I said this to an Italian once, and he said the reason was probably
this--that St. Mary of the Snow was not developed till long after Italian
art had begun to decline.
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