We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending, behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill; thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed roadside chapel with faded frescoes--a shepherd who played us some melodies on his pipe--those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime, glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth--the gateway of a farmhouse being repaired--a reservoir of water full of newts--a fascinating old woman who told us something about something--the distant view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless! At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet, simmering in the noonday beams--an everyday sheet of water, brown in colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking, give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy bed. Here are countless frogs, and fish--tench; also a boat that belongs to the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his boat. A party of youngsters came for an outing and two boys jumped into the tub, rowed out, and capsized it with their pranks. They were both drowned--a painful and piteous death--a death which I have tried, by accident, and can nowise recommend. They fished them out later from their slimy couch, and found that they had clasped one another so tightly in their mortal agony that it was deemed impious ever to unloosen that embrace. So they were laid to rest, locked in each other's arms. While my companion told me these things we had plodded further and further along this flat and inhospitable shore, and grown more and more taciturn. We were hungry and thirsty and hot, for one feels the onslaught of these first heats more acutely than the parching drought of August. Things looked bad. The luncheon hour was long past, and our spirits began to droop. All my mellowness took flight; I grew snappy and monosyllabic. Was there no shade? Yonder ... that dusky patch against the mountain? Brushwood of some kind, without a doubt. The place seemed to be unattainable, and yet, after an inordinate outlay of energy, we had climbed across those torrid meadows. It proved to be a hazel copse mysteriously dark within, voiceless, and cool as a cavern.