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While the horses are 'coming,' I stumble out into the town too. It
seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in
and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it
is profoundly dark, and raining heavily; and I shouldn't know it
to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which Heaven forbid.

The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the driver
swears; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan oaths.
Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he begins with
Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various messengers are
despatched; not so much after the horses, as after each other; for
the first messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate him.
At length the horses appear, surrounded by all the messengers; some
kicking them, and some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to
them. Then, the old priest, the young priest, the Avvocato, the
Tuscan, and all of us, take our places; and sleepy voices
proceeding from the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts
of the yard, cry out 'Addio corriere mio! Buon' viaggio,
corriere!' Salutations which the courier, with his face one
monstrous grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting and
wallowing away, through the mud.

At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the inn at
Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door,
with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides. The
old priest was taken with the cramp again, before he had got half-
way down the street; and the young priest laid the bundle of books
on a door-step, while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs.
The client of the Avvocato was waiting for him at the yard-gate,
and kissed him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I
am afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished
purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off,
carrying his hat in his hand that he might the better trail up the
ends of his dishevelled moustache. And the brave Courier, as he
and I strolled away to look about us, began immediately to
entertain me with the private histories and family affairs of the
whole party.

A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted, solitary,
grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half filled-up trenches,
which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about
them; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning at the other
houses over the way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go
wandering about, with the double curse of laziness and poverty,
uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals; the dirtiest of
children play with their impromptu toys (pigs and mud) in the
feeblest of gutters; and the gauntest of dogs trot in and out of
the dullest of archways, in perpetual search of something to eat,
which they never seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Palace,
guarded by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands

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