Today, it stopped raining. Finally. For the first time since Milan, two days ago. The great event happened just outside Borgo in the morning.

Avoiding Borgo out of ‘distaste’ (Hilaire Belloc The Path to Rome (Ignatius Press 2003), p.321) for Italian towns – the weather may have improved but Belloc’s temper certainly hadn’t – Belloc paused to give thought as to how he might cross the Apennines, which now loomed ahead of him.

For want of a suitable path, he would not be able to cross them directly. Instead, he’d have to follow a path that would take him a little out of his way before rejoining the straight line from Toul to Rome, ‘near a village called Medesano’ (The Path to Rome, p.322).

He started walking. It started raining. Again. But not for long; soon, the skies broke and the sun came out.

… a new warmth began to steal over the air and a sense of summer [began] to appear in the earth about me.

The Path to Rome, p.324

By evening time (? Belloc isn’t entirely clear on this point), Belloc was ‘[q]uite tired and desiring food’ (The Path to Rome, p.324). He stopped at an inn not far from Medesano.

It was a true local’s local: full of noise before the outsider stepped in, then absolute silence afterwards. Belloc walked to the bar.

… one man asked me a question in Italian. I did not understand it, and attempted to say so, when another asked the same question then six or seven – and there was a hubbub. And out of the hubbub I heard a similar sentence rising all the time. To this day I do not know what it meant but I thought (and think) it meant “He is a Venetian,” or “He is the Venetian.” Something in my broken broken language had made them think this, and evidently the Venetians (or a Venetian) were (or was) gravely unpopular here. Why, I cannot tell. Perhaps the Venetians were blacklegs. But evidently a Venetian, or the whole Venetian nation, had recently done them a wrong.

The Path to Rome, p.325

The situation got very hairy and could have got out of control. One of the locals approached Belloc aggressively. Fight or flight. Belloc chose to fight. He vigorously protested his innocence of whatever charge lay against him by shouting at the aggressor in as much Italian as he knew. This could have been the death of him but it worked. Not that the locals became friends: they now started shouting at each other in support or rejection of Belloc’s innocence. The innkeeper took Belloc’s arm and winked in a friendly manner at him, but as Belloc says,

[It] was probably because he was responsible if anything happened… he alone could not fly from the police.

The Path to Rome, p.326

Whatever the reason, the innkeeper played his part well. He,

… made [the patrons] a speech which, for all I knew may have been to the effect that he had known and loved me from childhood, or may have been that he knew me for one Jacques of Turin, or may have been any other lie. Whatever lie it was, it appeased them. Their anger went down to a murmur, just like soda-water settling into a glass.

The Path to Rome, p.326-7

The anger ‘went down to a murmur’ but was still there, and Belloc knew that at least one of the locals was armed with a knife. Wisely, therefore, he chose not to stay overlong at the inn. Instead, he ate his food and left straight after. Probably to save money but perhaps also because he simply didn’t feel safe being in the company of anyone from around here, he eschewed staying overnight in another inn or hotel but hid himself in a shed.