I wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town, and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. It was too general, taking in all central Italy, and even large places were marked only by small circles. When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall, perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its curtain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the town, and through one uneven place I saw houses. Many men were walking in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in and out of the little opening in a hive. But my main road to Rome did not go through Viterbo, it ran alongside of the eastern wall, and I debated a little with myself whether I would go in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not entered Montefiascone for that reason. On the other hand, Viterbo was a famous place. It is all very well to neglect Florence and Pisa because they are some miles off the straight way, but Viterbo right under one's hand it is a pity to miss. Then I needed wine and food for the later day in the mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was past eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason could not do, and I entered by a gate. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all shaded by the great houses, and still full of the cold of the night. The noise of fountains echoed in them, and the high voices of women and the cries of sellers. Every house had in it something fantastic and peculiar; humanity had twined into this place like a natural growth, and the separate thoughts of men, both those that were alive there and those dead before them, had decorated it all. There were courtyards with blinding whites of sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow; and there were many carvings and paintings over doors. I had come into a great living place after the loneliness of the road. There, in the first wide street I could find, I bought sausage and bread and a great bottle of wine, and then quitting Viterbo, I left it by the same gate and took the road.