Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring Christians,
who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to
start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned
to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a
narrow passage between two bedsteads: confronted by a smoky fire,
and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six o'clock next morning,
we were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that
enshrouded the town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of
Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began TO ASK THE WAY
to Milan.
It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now one of
the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the
landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly
custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd
of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and
rain outside his door, where they were gathered to receive his
charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained
low upon the ground, all that day and the next; the first sleeping-
place being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and
immensely high tower, the Torrazzo--to say nothing of its violins,
of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days; and
the second, Lodi.
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