In this way we travelled on, until four o'clock in the
afternoon; the roads being still very heavy, and the coach very
slow. To mend the matter, the old priest was troubled with cramps
in his legs, so that he had to give a terrible yell every ten
minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts of the
company; the coach always stopping for him, with great gravity.
This disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject of
conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that the coupe had
discharged two people, and had only one passenger inside--a
monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which no
man could see the ends when he had his hat on--I took advantage of
its better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who
was very conversational and good-humoured) travelled on, until
nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver reported that he
couldn't think of going any farther, and we accordingly made a halt
at a place called Stradella.
The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard where
our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls, and firewood,
were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy; so that you didn't
know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which
was a cart.
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