CHAPTER XIX
I AM AGAIN MISCONCEIVED
The aspect of Florence, surveyed from the crags of Fiesole, or from that
gentler eyrie of Bellosguardo, is one of the most enchanting visions
open to the eye of man, so cunningly have art and nature joined their
webbing; but that which can be harvested upon the road from Prato is not
at all extraordinary. Suburb there succeeds to dirty suburb, the roads
are quags or deep in dust, the company as disagreeable as it is mean.
Approaching the city from that side, you neither know that within a
short mile of you are the dome of Brunelleschi, the Tower of Giotto, the
David of Michael Angelo--nor do you greatly care. At least I did not,
being sadly out of spirits, upon that day of rain, steam and weariness,
when, with the young Virginia springing by my side, I limped within the
Porta al Prato and stood upon the sacred soil of the Second Athens.
Quick to feel impressions, too quick to read in them signs and portents,
I felt fatality press upon my brows.
A little way beyond that Porta al Prato, within the walls, there was,
and still is, I believe, a broad neglected field--ragged grass and
broken potsherds--surrounded on three sides out of four by shabby
houses, taverns and garden walls. It was called the Prato, and by the
shocking discrepancy between its name and appearance added to my
dejection, for the one recalled and the other mocked memories of that
green and sunlit plain in Padua, that dear Pra della Valle, upon whose
grassy dimples looked the house of Aurelia, and to whose wandering winds
I had so often sighed her name.
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