After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 524 pages of information about After Waterloo.

After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 524 pages of information about After Waterloo.
at Montefiascone and the monks of the Convent there, themselves bons-vivans, determined to give him a suitable epitaph.  They accordingly caused to be engraved on his tomb the following Latin inscription commemorative of the event:  Est, Est, Est, propter nimium Est, Dominus Episcopus mortuus EST. From the above circumstance this wine is called Vino d’Est, and it affords no small revenue to the proprietor of the cabaret on the road side who sells it.

We arrived at Viterbo to breakfast and at Ronciglione in the evening.  Viterbo is a large and handsome city and contains several striking buildings.  It is paved with lava and contains a great variety of fountains.  There is some appearance of commerce and industry in this town and there are several maisons de plaisance in the neighbourhood.  From Viterbo, thro’ Monterosi, to Ronciglione the road lies over a mountain of steep ascent; here and there are patches of forest.  There is not a house to be seen on this route and from there being a good deal of wood, and no appearance of cultivation, one fancies oneself rather in the wilds of a new country like America, than in so old a one as Italy.

Ronciglione is an old rubbishing town half in ruins and contains no one thing remarkable.

The next morning at four o’clock we started from Ronciglione and reached Baccano to breakfast.

Baccano contains only two buildings; but they are both very large and roomy; the one is the inn, and the other serves as a barrack for the Military.  There is always a strong military detachment here for the security of the road against robbers, who occasionally infest this neighbourhood.  The inn is of immense size.  Travellers, who arrive here late, would do well to halt here the whole night, as not only the road is dangerous on account of robbers, but because if they arrive at Rome after five o’clock p.m., they cannot release their baggage and carriage from the Custom house till next day.  Every carriage public or private that arrives in Rome is bound, unless a special permission to the contrary be obtained from the Government, to drive direct to the Custom house (Dogana).  In the like manner, on travelling from Rome to Florence, people generally prefer to start from Rome at twelve o’clock and bring to the night at Baccano, so as to avoid the bad inn at Ronciglione and sleep in preference at Viterbo.  I here speak only of those who travel by short stages as the vetturini do.

Ariosto has given a celebrity to this wretched place Baccano in his poem of the Orlando Furioso, in the story of Giocondo in the 28th Canto, as being the identical place where Fausto, the brother of Giocondo, remained to await the return of his brother from Rome, to which place he had gone back, when half way between Baccano and Rome, to fetch the monile which he had left behind him, and found his wife not alone and dying with grief as he apprehended, but sotto la coltre with a servant of the family.

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After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.