Both on the score of beauty and usefulness it is impossible to overpraise the practice here used of cultivating the mountains from base to summit, fashioning them into stairs of one level circle above the other, and strengthening the top of each platform with stone or some other material if it be not solid enough in itself. They sow corn on the level portion of each degree, be it wide or narrow, and on the edges of each, nearest the low ground, they train vines. Towards the summit, where there is no level space, they plant it all with vines.

At the ball lately referred to a lady danced with a vessel of water on her head. She kept it steady all through her dancing, though she skipped about in lively fashion. The physicians are wonderstruck to see how the majority of French guests here take the waters in the morning and bathe the same day.

I may say with confidence that up to this time, in the scanty intercourse I have had with the people of this place, I have failed to notice any of those wonders of talent and eloquence which report ascribes to them. I see no evidences of uncommon capacity in them; on the other hand, they are too prone to overrate my own slender faculties. Thus to-day it chanced that certain physicians had to hold an important consultation in the case of Signor Paulo de Cesis (nephew of Cardinal de Cesis56), who was visiting these baths. They waited on me on his behalf to beg me to listen to their opinions and arguments, adding that he had determined to be guided entirely by my decision, whereupon I could not help laughing in my sleeve. The same request was made to me with regard to other matters both here and at Rome.

At times I felt my eyes dazzled when I exerted them in reading or in gazing on any glittering object. I was greatly troubled thereanent, remembering that I had suffered from this weakness ever since I was seized with headache at Florence, that is to say, heaviness about the forehead without any pain; a haziness before the eyes which, though it did not limit my vision, disturbed it in a way I cannot describe. Since this time this headache had recurred twice or thrice, and now became more persistent, but left me free otherwise. But after I used the douche to my head it came back every day, and my eyes watered freely, but without pain or inflammation. Moreover, until I had this attack I had not suffered from headache for more than ten years; and, fearing lest the douche may have induced this weakness of the head, I did not use it to-day—Thursday—and remained only an hour in the bath.

The cost of living here in a private room comes to a little more than seventy-two gold crowns a month, to call for what you will; and as much again for a servant. Any one without a servant will find ready and convenient service done by the landlord in the way of catering.

If Calvin had known that the preaching friars in these parts call themselves “ministers” he would doubtless have found some other style for those of his own sect.57

At this season many people come to the bath and from the cases I have seen, and from the opinions of the physicians—especially of Donato, who has written concerning these waters—I am sure I have not made any great mistake in using the douche for my head, seeing that patients still use it when in the bath for soothing the stomach. This Donato permitted bathing and drinking at the same time, wherefore I regret I did, not venture always to take a draught during my morning bath as I wished to do. He was loud in praise of the water of Bernabo; but, for all this professional argument, this water seemed to have no effect upon certain others untroubled with gravel, which infirmity never left me. I cannot persuade myself that the water produced the gravel in my case.

On Friday I took a rest. The Minister Franciscan brother (for so they call the Provincials here), a worthy man of great learning and courtesy, who chanced to be at the baths with divers other friars, sent me a fine present of excellent wine and marchpanes and other eatables. On Saturday also I did no cure, but went to dine at Menalsio,58 a fine large village on the top of one of these mountains. I took some fish with me, and found accommodation at the house of a well-to-do soldier, who had travelled much in France and in other countries and had made money and married a wife in Flanders. His name was Santo. In these parts are fine churches, and great numbers of the peasants have been soldiers and have travelled abroad, the division between the partisans of France and Spain being very sharply marked. Without thinking what I did, I set a flower over my left ear, and thereby offended greatly the French faction. After dinner I went up to the fort, which is built with high walls right up to the top of the hill. The place is very steep, but highly cultivated throughout. Indeed, all through this region, amongst yawning chasms and precipitous ridges and cliffs and splintered crags, there are vines and grain planted, and even patches of pasture, which is not to be seen on the level plain below. I descended by a direct path on the other side of the mountain.

On the Sunday I bathed in company with certain other gentlemen, and remained in the bath half-an-hour. I received from Signor Ludovico Pinitesi a fine present of a horse laden with the finest fruit, amongst which were some early figs, the first which had been seen this season at the bath, and twelve flasks of the most mellow wine. Just at the same time the friar aforenamed sent me a great quantity of other sorts of fruit, wherefore I was able to make presents of the same to the villagers. After dinner there was a ball where I saw several ladies finely dressed, but not over comely, though they were some of the handsomest Lucca could show.

In the evening Signor Ludovico di Ferrari of Cremona, a gentleman well known to me, sent me a box of quince marmalade, musk flavoured, and some lemons, besides some oranges of extraordinary size. A little before daybreak I was seized with cramp in the calf of the right leg. The pain was sharp, intermittent and not continuous, and lasted about half-an-hour. I had a similar attack not long ago, but then it passed in a twinkling. Just at this season we began to be conscious of the heat and of the noise of the grasshoppers, but neither trouble was worse than in France. The air up to the present has seemed fresher than in Gascony.

In free nations you do not find, as otherwhere, the sharp division of classes, and here even the lowest bear themselves with a certain dignity. Even in asking alms they will always ask as if they had a right. “Give me something, will you?” “Give me something, do you understand?” Whereas in Rome they cry, “Do me a kindness for your own sake.”59

On Wednesday, June 21, I left Della Villa early in the morning, having received from the ladies and gentlemen there sojourning every mark of friendship that I could desire as I said good-bye. I travelled through a hilly country, fair and well wooded, for twelve miles as far as Pescia, a small town under Florence on the river Pescia, with fine houses and wide streets. Here the famous wine of Trebbiano is grown in a vineyard surrounded by thick olive woods. The people show great friendship to France, which accounts for their adoption of a dolphin as a crest.60 After dinner we traversed a fair plain, thickly set with villages and houses. I had resolved to visit Monte Catino, where is the hot salt spring of Tettuccio,61 a place a mile to the right of the direct road, about seven miles from Pescia, but through my heedlessness I forgot all about it till I got to Pistoia, a distance of eleven miles.

I found lodging outside the town, where I was visited by a son of M. de Ruspigliosi. Any one who travels in Italy otherwise than by hiring horses is a bad manager, for to me it seems far less irksome to change horses here and there, than to be in the hands of a single vetturino for a long journey. The twenty miles between Pistoia and Florence cost for horse hire only four julli. From Pistoia we passed Prato and came to Castello in time for dinner. We alighted at an inn opposite to the Grand Duke’s palace, and after dinner we went to view more particularly the garden belonging thereto, which I found to be less fair in reality than I had figured it, an experience I had often met before. The last time I saw it was in winter,62 when it was bare and desolate, and then I imaged its loveliness in the sweet of the year, but my fancy ran away with me. We had come seventeen miles to Castello, and after dinner we rode the remaining three and arrived at Florence.