Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/310

292 Feb. 24, 1787.

Although in a wretchedly cold chamber, I must yet try and give you some account of a beautiful day. It was already nearly light when we drove out of Fondi, and we were forthwith greeted by the orange-trees which hang over the walls on both sides of our road. The trees are loaded with such numbers as can only be imagined and not expressed. Toward the top the young leaf is yellowish, but below, and in the middle, of sappy green, Mignon was quite right to long for them.

After this we travelled through clean and well-worked fields of wheat, planted at convenient distances with olive-trees. A soft breeze was moving, and brought to the light the silvery under-surface of the leaves, as the branches swayed gently and elegantly. It was a gray morning: a north wind promised soon to dispel all the clouds.

Then the road entered a valley between stony but well-dressed fields,—the crops of the most beautiful green. At certain spots one saw some roomy places, paved and surrounded with low walls: on these the corn, which is never carried home in sheaves, is thrashed out at once. The valley gradually narrows, and the road becomes mountainous, bare rocks of limestone standing on both sides of us. A violent storm followed us, with a fall of sleet, which thawed very slowly.

The walls of an ancient style, built after the pattern of net-work, charmed us exceedingly. On the heights the soil is rocky, but nevertheless planted with olive-trees wherever there is the smallest patch of soil to receive them. Next we drove over a plain covered with olive-trees, and then through a small town. We here noticed altars, ancient tombstones, and fragments of every kind, built up in the walls of the pleasure-houses in the gardens; then the lower stones of ancient