Our dinner was ready by the time I got back to the inn, and we sat down to a chicken stewed in oil and a stoup of the white wine of Arqua.  It was a modest feast, but, being a friend to oil, I found it savory, and the wine was both good and strong.  While we lingered over the repast we speculated somewhat carelessly whether Arqua had retained among its simplicities the primitive Italian cheapness of which you read much.  When our landlord leaned over the table and made out our account on it with a bit of chalk, the bill was as follows:—­

Soldi. 
Chicken 70
Bread 8
Wine 20
—­
Total 98

It surely was not a costly dinner, yet I could have bought the same chicken in Venice for half the money; which is but another proof that the demand of the producer is often much larger than the supply of the consumer, and that to buy poultry cheaply you must not purchase it where raised,—­

..."On misty mountain ground,
Its own vast shadow glory crowned,”—­

but rather in a large city after it has been transported forty miles or more.  Not that we begrudged the thrifty inn-keeper his fee.  We paid it cheerfully, as well for his own sake as for that of his pleasant and neat little wife, who kept the whole inn so sweet and clean; and we bade them a most cordial farewell as we drove away from their door.

III.

Returning, we stopped at the great castle of the Obizzi (now the property of the Duke of Modena), through which we were conducted by a surly and humorous custode, whose pride in life was that castle and its treasures, so that he resented as a personal affront the slightest interest in any thing else.  He stopped us abruptly in the midst of the museum, and, regarding the precious antiques and curiosities around him, demanded: 

“Does this castle please you?” Then, with a scornful glance at us, “Your driver tells me you have been at Arqua?  And what did you see at Arqua?  A shabby little house and a cat without any hair on.  I would not,” said this disdainful custode, “go to Arqua if you gave me a lemonade.”

A VISIT TO THE CIMBRI.

I had often heard in Venice of that ancient people, settled in the Alpine hills about the pretty town of Bassano, on the Brenta, whom common fame declares to be a remnant of the Cimbrian invaders of Rome, broken up in battle, and dispersed along the borders of North Italy, by Marius, many centuries ago.  So when the soft September weather came, last year, we sallied out of Venice, in three, to make conquest of whatever was curious in the life and traditions of these mountaineers, who dwell in seven villages, and are therefore called the people of the Sette Communi among their Italian neighbors.  We went fully armed with note-book and sketch-book, and prepared to take literary possession of our conquest.