fared with us had
this been all. We had never been so near horses at night, and had no
idea they made such an incessant noise. _One_ horse stabled and
littered for the night were bad enough, but we had a whole stableful;
and just as we were forgetting the fleas, and forgiving the mosquitos,
and sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids, a snort,
loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long
succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort,
from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (_equo ne credite,
Teucri!_)--one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay,
another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more
than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed!
This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they
coughed, which was often, the hoarse _roncione_ shook the very
tressels of our bed; in short, we never suffered such real night_mare_
before. We dreamt _stethoscopes_ and racks. But morning came, and,
with it, morning freshness and morning sound. The wood-pigeons are
cooing, the green hills just opposite seem to have come closer up to
our window to wish us good-day; so we throw open our little casement,
to let out the gaseous compounds from bed and stable. How elegantly do
the dew-bedded vines take hold of the poplars and elms, and hang their
festoons of ripening fruit from branch to branch! But the sun begins
to break a brilliant pencil of rays over the hill-top, nor will he
take long to leave the screen and uncover himself; indeed, in less
than a quarter of an hour, he will have stared us quite out of
countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been
completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will
become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the
sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better
make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after
overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one
break-down or overturn since he first set off on his _Macadamized_
way. In haste to escape from the heat of the plains of Tuscany, we
were not sorry when we saw the douaniers of _Pistoia_, the last of its
cities. This town is dulness, not epitomized, but extended over a
considerable space; its streets are many, long, and, what is not usual
in Italy, wide. There is no population stirring; the very piazz