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A stranger had arrived at the albergo and Donna Maria did not know how to manage unless he supped with me; I was delighted to make his acquaintance and to have his company, especially as he turned out to be an ingenious French gentleman with a passion for classification.
So it happened that, getting out of the diligence before it reached Foggia, I struck south, and wandered for some days from one little town to another, being always hospitably entertained, whether there happened to be an albergo or not, at private houses, seeing in this way more of the manners and customs of the inhabitants than would have been otherwise possible, gaining much information as to the haunts of the brigands, the whereabouts of the troops, and hearing much local gossip generally.
In another corner of the Piazza stands a campanile with a peal of those absurd little jangling bells, which are among the most characteristic charms of Italy. Down a side street is the Albergo Rosa d'Oro, where for a week I was billeted. The padrone, a little round man, is always smiling.
The melody of lines and the harmony of parts made a symphony to his eyes no less agreeable than a concert of tuned lutes and voices to his ears; and to this concord he was so sensitive that any deviation was a discord. After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about the streets awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge in the old Albergo del Pozzo.
It is by Porta S. Pietro that we enter Lucca, coming by rail from Pistoja, and from Pisa too, then crossing La Madonnina and Corso Garibaldi by Via Nazionale, we come almost at once into Piazza Giglio, where the old Palazzo Arnolfi stands a building of the sixteenth century that is now Albergo Universo.
Two of my friends, natives of the mountain, one a doctor and the other the accountant to the Municipio, were at the Trapani gate to meet me, both in hooded cloaks, so that I did not recognize them till they spoke. The wind was tremendous. The narrow sloping streets were running with water as we walked up through the town to the albergo, where Donna Anna received us.
The formidable process of loading the diligence was not yet completed. There was a perfect Mont Blanc of luggage to transfer from the courtyard to the top of the diligence, not in a hurry, but calmly and deliberately. The articles were to be selected one by one, and put upon the top, and taken down again, and laid in the courtyard, and put up a second time, and perhaps a third time; and after repeated attempts and failures, and a reasonable amount of vociferation and emphatic ejaculations on the part of postilions and commissionaires, the thing was to be declared completed, and finally roped down, and the great leathern cover drawn over all. Still the process would be got through before the hour of table d'hote at the Albergo de Reale. I must needs therefore dine at a restaurant. I betook me to one of these establishments hard by the diligence office, and took my place at a small table, with its white napery, small bottle of wine, and roll of Lombardy bread, in the same room with some thirty or so of the merchants and citizens of Milan. I intimated my wish to dine
On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he met an elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his time there. She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as everyone always was, by his conversation and original views on the many subjects that interested him. We may be sure he told her all about himself and what he had done and was intending to do.
Apart from the difficulty of avoiding him altogether on the limited walks in Venice, the restaurant at Albergo San Marco where I joined Ritter every day for meals led to inevitable meetings with this stranger, to whom I eventually became sincerely attached. He had taken up his abode in that hotel, and I could not prevent him from taking his meals there.
Si, signora, we still live in the same apartment in the Borgo Santo Jacopo, on the south side of the Arno. I would not go away, because when my husband is at the albergo I can look across the river and think that he is there. Very often when I sit up late at my work, and all the rest are asleep and Luigi at the albergo, I look over the river, and the lights at the "Stella" seem to keep me company.
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