It is most
terrifying to realize; and I have always felt this terror upon a new
Italian high-road--more there than anywhere.
The remembrance of the Ticino valley is a sort of nightmare to me. But
it was better when at last, in the darkness of night, I got into
Bellinzona. In the midst of the town one felt the old organism still
living. It is only at its extremities that it is falling to pieces, as
in dry rot.
In the morning, leaving Bellinzona, again I went in terror of the new,
evil high-road, with its skirting of huge cubical houses and its
seething navvy population. Only the peasants driving in with fruit were
consoling. But I was afraid of them: the same spirit had set in in them.
I was no longer happy in Switzerland, not even when I was eating great
blackberries and looking down at the Lago Maggiore, at Locarno, lying by
the lake; the terror of the callous, disintegrating process was too
strong in me.
At a little inn a man was very good to me. He went into his garden and
fetched me the first grapes and apples and peaches, bringing them in
amongst leaves, and heaping them before me.
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