It was there standing away upon the house-tops, against a
glamour of foliaged hillside. I was submerged in the village, on the
uneven, cobbled street, between old high walls and cavernous shops and
the houses with flights of steps.
For a long time I knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour of
midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge of
the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Till
at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing of
the Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion with me.
So I set out to find it, I wanted to go to it. It was very near. I could
see it from the piazza by the lake. And the village itself had only a
few hundreds of inhabitants. The church must be within a stone's throw.
Yet I could not find it. I went out of the back door of the house, into
the narrow gully of the back street. Women glanced down at me from the
top of the flights of steps, old men stood, half-turning, half-crouching
under the dark shadow of the walls, to stare. It was as if the strange
creatures of the under-shadow were looking at me.
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