, with an action that very
graphically represented a singular survival of the classical _testor
inferos!_ Then suddenly changing his mood, he apostrophised the
missing beast with the almost tearful reproach, "There! there now!
Thou hast made me throw away all my devotions! All! And Easter only
just gone!" That is to say, your fault has betrayed me into violence
and bad language, which has begun a new record of offences just after
I had made all clear by my Easter devotions.

The first stage of our rough ride was to the little hill town of
Prato Vecchio on the infant Arno, and close under the lofty peaks of
Falterona, in the flanks of which both the Arno and the Tiber rise.
The path, as it descends to the town, winds round the ruins of an
ancient castle, beneath the walls of which is still existent that
Fontebranda fountain, which Adam the forger in the _Inferno_ longed
for a drop of, and which almost all Dantescan scholars and critics
mistake for a larger and nowadays better known fountain of the same
name at Siena. On pointing it out to George Eliot, I found, of course,
that the name and the whole of Adam the forger's history was familiar
to her; but she had little expected to find his local habitation among
these wild hills; and she was unaware of the current mistake between
the Siena Fontebranda, and the little rippling streamlet before us.

The little _osteria_, at which we were to get some breakfast, was a
somewhat lurid dwelling in an uninviting back lane. But the ready and
smiling good-humour with which the hostess prepared her coffee and
bread, and eggs and bacon, availed much to make up for deficiencies,
especially for guests far more interested in observing every minute
specialty of the place, the persons, and the things, than they were
extreme to mark what was amiss. I remember George Eliot was especially
struck by the absence of either milk or butter, and by the fact that
the inhabitants of these hills, and indeed the Tuscans of the remoter
parts of the country generally, never use them at all--or did not in
those days.

But it was beyond Prato Vecchio that the most characteristic part of
our ride began. The hills, into the folds and gullies of which we
plunged almost immediately after leaving the walls of the little town,
are of the most arid, and it is hardly too much to say, repulsive
description. It is impossible to imagine soil more evidently to the
least experienced eye hopeless for any purpose usef