Lippincott's Magazine, page 9 by Various Authors
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esent narrator; and their joint friend, another Margaret, who, whilst loyal to her native country, America, had created for herself, through her talent, her love of true work and her self-dependence, a bright social and artistic life in Italy. As for Perugia, our happy quartette had plenty of opportunities for studying the old masters in the winter months. Now we were anxious to exchange the oppressive, leaden air of the Italian summer for the invigorating breezes of the Alps.
Yet how fresh and graceful Italy still looked as we traveled northward in the second week of June! The affluent and at the same time gentle sunshine streamed through the broad green leaves of the vines, which were flung in elegant festoons from tree to tree. It intensified the bright scarlet of the myriad poppies, which glowed amongst the brilliant green corn. It lighted up the golden water-lilies lying on the surface of the slowly-gliding streams, and brought into still greater contrast the tall amber-colored campanile or the black cypress grove cut in sharp outline against the diaphanous blue sky. We knew, however, that fever could lurk in this very luxury of beauty, while health was awaiting us in the more sombre scenes of gray mountain and green sloping pasture. We traveled on, therefore, by the quickest and easiest route, and alighting from the express-train to Munich at the Brixen station on the Brenner Pass, were shortly deposited, bag and baggage, at that comfortable and thoroughly German inn, the renowned Elephant.
We prided ourselves on being experienced travelers, and consequently immediately secured four places in the Eilwagen, which was to start from the inn at six o'clock the next morning for our destination, Bruneck. We handed over our luggage to the authorities, partook of supper and then retired contentedly to rest--in the case of the two Margarets to the soundest of slumbers--until in the morning we were suddenly awoke, not by the expected knock of the chambermaid, but by a hurrying to and fro of feet, and th