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The church or chapel formed one side of a quadrangle, in the middle of which a large clump of bananas were growing. On another side was a hospital, containing about a dozen miserable-looking inmates. We returned to the Venda to eat our dinners. A considerable number of men, women, and children, all as black as jet, collected to watch us.
The dishes were numerous, and prepared very nearly in the European fashion. Great astonishment was manifested in every venda and fazenda at seeing a lady arrive accompanied only by a single servant. The first question was, whether I was not afraid thus to traverse the woods alone; and my guide was invariably taken on one side, and questioned as to way I travelled.
While thus busily and agreeably employed, they were told by the owner of the venda that a festa was being celebrated at a village about a league distant from where they stood. "I should like to see it above all things," said Martin eagerly; "could we not go?" The hermit frowned. "Yes, we can go, but it will be to behold folly. Perhaps it will be a good lesson, from which much may be learned.
Universally the front part is open, forming a kind of verandah, in which tables and benches are placed. The bedrooms join on each side, and here the passenger may sleep as comfortably as he can, on a wooden platform covered by a thin straw mat. The venda stands in a courtyard, where the horses are fed.
The sun went down behind Monte Venda, the bats came flickering out, the great droning cockchafers dropped on the road like splashes of rain. The night found them still far from Abano, but still talking and nearly all friends. Silvestro was hand in hand with Petruccio and another boy, called Mastino because he was heavy-jowled and underhung.
The last time the mail had passed, it was attacked at the defile of La Rumblar by six mounted robbers; it was guarded by an escort of as many soldiers, but the former suddenly galloped from behind a solitary venda, and dashed the soldiers to the ground, who were taken quite by surprise, the hoofs of the robbers' horses making no noise on account of the sandy nature of the ground.
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