ted
them, as usual, to have their way; and it was decided what route they
should take--that is, the priest was kind enough to decide for them, and
was also kind enough to promise to go with them part of the route, as far
as a place where there was a wonderful figure of Holy Mary, which the
priest said it was highly necessary for them to see before visiting the
Eternal City: so we left Naples in hired carriages, driven by fellows
they call veturini, cheating, drunken dogs, I remember they were.
Besides our own family there was the priest and his subordinate, and a
couple of hired lackeys. We were several days upon the journey,
travelling through a very wild country, which the ladies pretended to be
delighted with, and which the governor cursed on account of the badness
of the roads; and when we came to any particularly wild spot we used to
stop, in order to enjoy the scenery, as the ladies said; and then we
would spread a horse-cloth on the ground, and eat bread and cheese, and
drink wine of the country. And some of the holes and corners in which we
bivouacked, as the ladies called it, were something like this place where
we are now, so that when I came down here it put me in mind of them. At
last we arrived at the place where was the holy image.

'We went to the house or chapel in which the holy image was kept--a
frightful, ugly black figure of Holy Mary, dressed in her usual way; and
after we had stared at the figure, and some of our party had bowed down
to it, we were shown a great many things which were called holy relics,
which consisted of thumb-nails, and fore-nails, and toe-nails, and hair,
and teeth, and a feather or two, and a mighty thigh-bone, but whether of
a man or a camel I can't say; all of which things, I was told, if
properly touched and handled, had mighty power to cure all kinds of
disorders. And as we went from the holy house we saw a man in a state of
great excitement: he was foaming at the mouth, and cursing the holy image
and all its household, because, after he had worshipped it and made
offerings to it, and besought it to assist him in a game of chance which
he was about to play, it had left him in the lurch, allowing him to lose
all his money. And when I thought of all the rubbish I had seen, and the
purposes which it was applied to, in conjunction with the rage of the
losing gamester at the deaf and dumb image, I could not help comparing
the whole with what my poor brother used to tell me