ere we slept in the
middle of a _contadino_ colony. Some of the folk had made way for
us; and by the wheezing, coughing, and snoring of several sorts and
ages in the chamber next me, I imagine they must have endured
considerable crowding. My bed was large enough to have contained a
family. Over its bead there was a little shrine, hollowed in the
thickness of the wall, with several sacred emblems and a shallow
vase of holy water. On dressers at each end of the room stood glass
shrines, occupied by finely dressed Madonna dolls and pots of
artificial flowers. Above the doors S. Michael and S. Francis,
roughly embossed in low relief and boldly painted, gave dignity and
grandeur to the walls. These showed some sense for art in the first
builders of the house. But the taste of the inhabitants could not be
praised. There were countless gaudy prints of saints, and exactly
five pictures of the Bambino, very big, and sprawling in a field
alone. A crucifix, some old bottles, a gun, old clothes suspended
from pegs, pieces of peasant pottery and china, completed the
furniture of the apartment.

But what a view it showed when Christian next morning opened the
door! From my bed I looked across the red-tiled terrace to the
stone-pines with their velvet roofage and the blue-peaked hills of
Stabiae.

San Germano

No one need doubt about his quarters in this country town. The
Albergo di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. Sofas, tables, and
chairs in our sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly
pieced together, but torturing the senses with suggestions of
impalement. Sitting or standing, one felt insecure. When would the
points run into us? when should we begin to break these
incrustations off? and would the whole fabric crumble at a touch
into chaotic heaps of horns?

It is market day, and the costumes in the streets are brilliant. The
women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made straight and tightly
bound above it, a white richly worked bodice, and the white
square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on their heads. Their jacket is
of red or green--pure colour. A rug of striped red, blue, yellow,
and black protects the whole dress from the rain. There is a very
noble quality of green--sappy and gemmy--like some of Titian's or
Giorgione's--in the stuffs they use. Their build and carriage are
worthy of goddesses.

Rain falls heavily, persistently. We must ride on donkeys, in
waterproofs, to Monte Cassino. Mountain and