_Italians in Exile_
When I was in Constance the weather was misty and enervating and
depressing, it was no pleasure to travel on the big flat desolate lake.
When I went from Constance, it was on a small steamer down the Rhine to
Schaffhausen. That was beautiful. Still, the mist hung over the waters,
over the wide shallows of the river, and the sun, coming through the
morning, made lovely yellow lights beneath the bluish haze, so that it
seemed like the beginning of the world. And there was a hawk in the
upper air fighting with two crows, or two rooks. Ever they rose higher
and higher, the crow flickering above the attacking hawk, the fight
going on like some strange symbol in the sky, the Germans on deck
watching with pleasure.
Then we passed out of sight between wooded banks and under bridges where
quaint villages of old romance piled their red and coloured pointed
roofs beside the water, very still, remote, lost in the vagueness of the
past. It could not be that they were real. Even when the boat put in to
shore, and the customs officials came to look, the village remained
remote in the romantic past of High Germany, the Germany of fairy tales
and minstrels and craftsmen.
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