nd yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say
something immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no
fear of consequences. What did it matter to him if we were pulling out
our watches and chattering in well-contented undertone about _vino
nobile_, _biftek_, and possibly a _pollo arrosto_, or a dish of _tordi_?
At the end of the half-hour, as he was well aware, self-congratulations
and visions of a hearty supper would turn to discontented wailings, and
the querulous complaining of defrauded appetites. But the end of half an
hour was still half an hour off; and we meanwhile were comfortable.

The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a
white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents, splashing
against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as though they could
but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon them. Far away above us
to the left, was one light on a hill, which never seemed to get any
nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of blackness below us on one
side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and a high bank on the other.
Sometimes a star swam out of the drifting clouds; but then the rain
hissed down again, and the flashes came in floods of livid light,
illuminating the eternal olives and the cypresses which looked like huge
black spectres. It seemed almost impossible for the horses to keep their
feet, as the mountain road grew ever steeper and the torrent swelled
around them. Still they struggled on. The promised half hour had been
doubled, trebled, quadrupled, when at last we saw the great brown sombre
walls of a city tower above us. Then we entered one of those narrow
lofty Tuscan gates, and rolled upon the pavement of a street.

The inn at Montepulciano is called Marzocco, after the Florentine lion
which stands upon its column in a little square before the house. The
people there are hospitable, and more than once on subsequent occasions
have they extended to us kindly welcome. But on this, our first
appearance, they had scanty room at their disposal. Seeing us arrive so
late, and march into their dining-room, laden with sealskins,
waterproofs, and ulsters, one of the party hugging a complete Euripides
in Didot's huge edition, they were confounded. At last they conducted
the whole company of four into a narrow back bed-room, where they
pointed to one fair-sized and one very little bed. This was the only
room at liberty, they said; and co