It is not a country in which one walks after tea.

For one thing there is no grass.

A whole hillside will be ruled with olive trees.
Already in April the earth is clotted into dry dust between them.

And there are neither stiles nor footpaths, nor lanes chequered with the shadows of leaves nor eighteenth-century inns with bow-windows, where one eats ham and eggs.

Oh no, Italy is all fierceness, bareness, exposure, and black priests shuffling along the roads.