The noontide sun streamed in at
intervals between the showers.
After dinner we went "al cresto della collina"--to the crest of the
hill--to use Signor Bonaudo's words, and looked down upon S.
Giorio, and the other villages of the Combe of Susa. Nothing could
be more delightful. Then, getting under the chestnuts, I made the
sketch which I have already given. While making it I was accosted
by an underjawed man (there is an unusually large percentage of
underjawed people in the neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio), who asked
whether my taking this sketch must not be considered as a sign that
war was imminent. The people in this valley have bitter and
comparatively recent experience of war, and are alarmed at anything
which they fancy may indicate its recurrence. Talking further with
him, he said, "Here we have no signori; we need not take off our
hats to any one except the priest. We grow all we eat, we spin and
weave all we wear; if all the world except our own valley were
blotted out, it would make no difference, so long as we remain as
we are and unmolested." He was a wild, weird, St. John the Baptist
looking person, with shaggy hair, and an Andrea Mantegnesque
feeling about him. I gave him a pipe of English tobacco, which he
seemed to relish, and so we parted.
I stayed a week or so at another place not a hundred miles from
Susa, but I will not name it, for fear of causing offence.
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