brown or blue trousers which sometimes reached but
a little below the knee, a white shirt, and a brown jacket hung over the
shoulder. The daughter of the house, who served us at a rough restaurant
where we had _dejeuner_ together with some of the country folk, was
anxious to know whether the language we were speaking together was
Russian. I fancy English travellers are very rare in that part of the
country.

A few miles south of Canfanaro is the little town of San Vincenti, in
which is one of the best preserved of the Istrian castles, showing
indeed little sign of ruin externally. It occupies one side of the main
piazza. At right angles to it is the church, with a facade recalling the
work of the Lombardi, and there is a loggia and a public cistern, made
in 1808 to ensure a good supply of drinking-water. In this piazza a
joust was held as late as June 24, 1713. There Maria Radoslavich was
hung and then burnt as a witch on February 25, 1632.

[Illustration: AN ANGLE OF THE CASTLE, SAN VINCENTI

_To face page 130_]

The castle is quadrilateral with a round and an octagonal tower at the
angles of the northern face. The opposite side has a square tower at the
angle to the right, and to the left the house of the governor just
beyond the entrance-gate; the walls splay out widely to the bottom of
the ditch. The slits for the chains of the drawbridge are on each side
of a little grated window, and above the door are the date 1485 and the
arms of Marino Grimani, with an inscription recording a restoration in
1589 after a fire in 1586. On a small door inside is the date 1728,
showing that the castle underwent restorations and rebuildings. In the
middle of the cornice is an arch for the castle-bell. The town was part
of the feud of S. Apollinare, and was destroyed in 1330 by the soldiers
of the Patriarch Pagano della Torre. The castle belonged first to the
Castropola, then to the Morosini, and finally to the Grimani. It was
dismantled by Bernardo Tiepolo after the war of Gradisca (during which
Loredano used it as his quarters general), with the object of freeing
the people from forced service of various kinds. Low buildings used as
harness and store-rooms, &c., still remain against the walls inside, but
the stair to the suite of principal rooms is ruinous. It is external,
and led to a terrace beneath which were prisons, and from which another
flight rose to a door of entrance, walled up but still traceable, at a
considerable h