The type of face we met was
primitive; scarcely one which would have been out of place on some old
Roman coin. Here, at the end of a narrow, shadowed street, where St.
Anselm first saw the light (it must have been with difficulty) we came
upon a magnificent archway, built to do honour to Augustus Caesar's
defeat of the brave Salasses, four and twenty years before the world
had a Saviour. A few steps further on, and we were under the majestic
mass of the Porta Pretoria; or we were crossing a Roman bridge, or
gazing at the ruins of Roman ramparts. Or, we lost our way in
searching for the amphitheatre, and found ourselves suddenly skipping
over centuries into the Middle Ages, represented by the mysterious
Tour Bramafam, the Tour des Prisons, or the Tour du Lepreux, round
which Xavier Maistre wrote his pathetic dialogue. Then, there was the
cathedral with its extraordinary painted facade, like a great coloured
picture-book; and the tall cross, straddling a spring in a paved
street, put up in thanksgiving by the Aostans when they joyfully saw
Calvin's back for the last time.
We spent all day in sightseeing, and had another moonlight evening on
the loggia. We were great pals now, Boy and I. I had never met anyone
in the least like him. At one moment he was a human boy, almost a
child; at another his brain leaped beyond mine, and he became a poet
or a philosopher; again he was an elfin sprite, a creature for whom
Puck was the one thinkable name.
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