as poisonous, and call by the opprobrious name of toad-stools.1

These poor people rarely taste of meat,—it is too expensive. Their chief food is a sort of heavy bread made of dry and ground chestnuts, or a kind of coarse grain, with beans, roots, or fruits which they find in the woods, the nuts of the beech, and potatoes when they can afford to buy them. Nor have they much even of this fare. How they manage to live on it is to me a mystery; and a still greater mystery it seemed

1 All the slopes of the Apennines abound in mushrooms, some of which are of very large size. Soldani, in his ‘Guida storica,' says that in the neighbourhood of Camaldoli there is a certain kind of fungus called Vesce di Lupo, globular in shape, and white within and without, which attains the weight of 24 Italian pounds; and he adds, in confirmation of his statement, the fact that a certain Padre Don Adelelmo, a Camaldolese monk, made him and his uncle a present of one of these Vesci, which, when whole, weighed 21 lb., and that he and his family ate it and found it excellent. This mushroom is probably the same as that described by Theophrastus (Hist. Plant., lib. i. cap. 9) as the Cranium, on account of its resemblance to the human skull. Marsili also describes a mushroom which grows near Padua, along the Euganean Hills, which sometimes weighs 25 lb.

The

when they showed me the small store of their gleanings of chestnuts which they had laid up for their winter supply. Still, with all their privations, they look strong and healthy. children were rosy and vigorous, the maidens some of them handsome, and all well-grown and erect. So also the young men were fine-looking, stalwart fellows. But age soon tells upon them; they grow old early; and when disease strikes them, they have little powers of resistance. On all their faces, after they had passed thirty, there was the pinched, sad look of patient poverty, and a certain refinement, too, of expression in their worn faces, as well as great gentleness of manner and speech-at least among those whom I saw and to whom I spoke—that awakened sympathy and respect. None of them begged, though it was plain that they were in need.

I was speaking of them one evening as we were sitting round our dinner-table, when the

Marquis Fornace said of some of the peasant girls,—“ All are remarkably handsome, or rather, I should say, were, for I only knew the place years ago. Beppa, for instance. Beppa was a great beauty. Do you remember Beppa?" turning to our host.

"Beppa? of course I do. She was born in this very house where we are now living; and as I used frequently to shoot over this ground years ago, when I was a bachelor, many a night I have passed here when she was growing up into a woman. Yes, she was handsome."

"Handsome? she was magnificent! What eyes! dark and luminous, and clear as an autumn night. Then what teeth! the pearls of Marchesini were nothing beside them. What a smile! What a figure, lithe as a willow, and

full of grace! Ah, what a beauty!"

"Poet!" cried our host

"poet! He ex

aggerates, as all poets do. Still, there is some foundation in fact for what he says. Beppa

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75

had fine eyes and superb teeth, I admit, and was a very pretty girl. Of course, she was slender, but she was young; and all the women here are slender. Elvira, her sister-in-law, was really a beauty, and had one of those Madonna faces such as Raffaelle delighted to paint, such as any painter might rejoice to have as a model —simple, sweet, refined, and peaceful."

"Ah! I never saw her," said the Marquis ; "but I daresay she was all you describe her to be. But Beppa, Beppa was my beauty."

"What there was besides her eyes and teeth that was charming in Beppa was a fine carelessness and thoughtlessness of bearing, a certain frank light-hearted way she had in all her movements and speech-a sort of freedom, like a wild natural thing that the world had not tamed."

'Do you remember," said the Marquis, "that little expedition we made together years ago (how the years go! it must be at least twelve

-more, perhaps; and it seems scarcely six months!)—in May, I think, or it might have been later in the year? Janet was with us, and the M.'s, and we set out from Vallombrosa to walk to Poder Nuovo and picnic in the woods; and as we were coming up the rough road, a little way from the Lago, suddenly 'Poum, poum' above us roared the thunder like a broadside of a hundred guns, and the heavens seemed to split open, and down came the rain in a deluge. When it rains in this country, it rains it does not make believe. Fortunately we all of us, save you, had umbrellas and waterproofs, and so we were protected; but you, after the foolish way you always had, scorned such impedimenta—and there you were, with nothing to shield you, saying you did not care for such trifles. Well, in a few minutes you were drenched to the skin, and dripping as a drowned rat, and we were all of us glad to find a refuge here at the Lago. There and then it was that