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284 ings of first arrival ! My new companions were soon all in possession of the facts of my recent adventure, and laughter rang through the room, dominated by the sten- torian peals of my runa- gate guide, the postman, who by no means de- creased the point of the story, or our universal merriment, by drawing forth a huge, murder- ous-looking jack-knife, which, he said, he had been on the point, when I had failed to under- stand him in the valley, of producing, to show me that there was no dan- ger in that part of the country, or that, if there was, he had that big knife to defend me nith ! The postman, whose name is Greco, I soon found was quite one of the family party, and made himself complete- ly at home, drinking glasses of that horrible wine to my health, to my reassurance, to our friendship, to any excuse that came into his unil- luminated head. I had, ~'; too, three other table companions, who, indeed i are always at our feasts — ' namely, two dogs and a kid. (Not a juvenile, be it under- stood, but one of the sort that is born unto goats.) This is a pet kid of very reserved manner, who con- stantly resents any undue familiarity on the part of the less self-conscious dogs, such as the touch of a paw or the flop of a tail, by butting at them till they howl. He is greatly spoilt, not only by his master (one of the Italian painters), but by the other artists and by all the population.

One soon becomes accustomed to anything ; and now it no more strikes me as singular to see this spoilt kid walking on the table at meals, sniffing about with its inteiTogative nose in search of salad or brown bread, of which it is immensely fond, than does the tablecloth itself, which is about the texture of the very roughest bath-towel that ever rasped the back of a Briton. The serviettes are made of the same stuff. Pocket-hand- kerchiefs I have not as yet seen, for I believe they are generally regarded as a supei-fluous luxury, and have no practical signification whatever among the inhabitants ; but I verily believe that if, in any voyage of discovery among them, I should light upon such a thing in the possession of one of the more fasti- dious, it will prove to be of like texture with that of the tablecloth.

When I say that the pension at ' Casa Amato ' is three francs a day, including wine (if wine it may be called which never knew the grape) and washing, it will not be expected that the viands are choice, or that, such as they are, they are prepared by a cordon-hleu.

The habits of the place are to rise, unless impelled by an indecorous energy or by particularly bad dreams, about six o'clock. It is true that there was one man who for several weeks rose regularly at half-past three in the morning, and was to be found before his easel by four a.m.; but then it is only fair to state that he was painting a grey effect, having been tempted to begin his subject on one of those rare cloudy days, and, as in Italy the blue sky is almost as perpetual as the days when the cicale sing — that is, that if it is sufficiently cloudy to be worthy the name of 'a grey day,' it is almost certain to rain — he had to finish his picture before yet the sun had risen over the hills.

Your coffee is brought to you by one of the two comely sisters of mine host, by his wife, or by his sister-in-law (wife of him of the ' cheap-jacquerie ') — a large choice, but the only one, as it is almost impossible to get a servant in the place, as all the girls and women not actually engaged in agriculture are induced by the few soldi a day more offered by the railway to go and help in the construction of the new line destined to continue that from Rome to Cineto as far as Sulmona, and now almost concluded. It is a little difficult to recognise in these women the blue blood of the place — the sisters and ' people ' of mine host himself, who as chemist, and nephew of the mayor of the village, is very much by way of being one's equal. Indeed I fear he sometimes treats us poor painters mi peu de haul en has. This means that we must be careful to give them the ' le,' or third person singular, the pronoun of ceremony p«r excellence, and not the ' tu,' or second person singular, the habit one so soon acquires of addressing all the cotitadiiii here, as the latter, without the least hesitation, adopt it towards you. This coffee, with goat's milk, is brought in the thickest of tumblers consistent with a possibility of getting the glass between one's lips, and is accompanied by a huge lump of coarse, but really most appetising, brown bread. Butter is unknown to the oldest and most enlightened inhabitants of the village ; and the most daringly soaring and recklessly speculative intellects have failed to form any conception of its colour, consistency, and uses. And I also must confess, at the risk of incurring the scorn and odium of the correctly apparelled, that blacking is as little known in the country as a top-hat. The shine of it on one's first arrival from Rome attracts as much attention to one's