surface
of romance with which the Italians contrive to varnish the real
commonplaceness of their life. Our ride through the twilight landscape
had prepared us for the sentiment of Bassano; we had pleased ourselves
with the spectacle of the peasants returning from their labor in the
fields, led in troops of eight or ten by stalwart, white-teethed,
bare-legged maids; and we had reveled in the momentary lordship of
an old walled town we passed, which at dusk seemed more Gothic and
Middle-Age than any thing after Verona, with a fine church, and
turrets and battlements in great plenty. What town it was, or what it
had been doing there so many ages, I have never sought to know, and I
should be sorry to learn any thing about it.

The next morning we began those researches for preliminary information
concerning the Cimbri which turned out so vain. Indeed, as we drew
near the lurking-places of that ancient people, all knowledge relating
to them diffused itself into shadowy conjecture. The barber and the
bookseller differed as to the best means of getting to the Sette
Communi, and the _caffetiere_ at whose place we took breakfast knew
nothing at all of the road, except that it was up the mountains, and
commanded views of scenery which verily, it would not grieve us to
see. As to the Cimbri, he only knew that they had their own language,
which was yet harder than the German. The German was hard enough, but
the Cimbrian! _Corpo_!

At last, hearing of a famous cave there is at Oliero, a town some
miles further up the Brenta, we determined to go there, and it was a
fortunate thought, for there we found a nobleman in charge of the cave
who told us exactly how to reach the Sette Communi. You pass a bridge
to get out of Bassano--a bridge which spans the crystal swiftness of
the Brenta, rushing down to the Adriatic from the feet of the Alps on
the north, and full of voluble mills at Bassano. All along the road to
Oliero was the finest mountain scenery, Brenta-washed, and picturesque
with ever-changing lines. Maize grows in the bottom-lands, and
tobacco, which is guarded in the fields by soldiers for the monopolist
government. Farm-houses dot the valley, and now and then we passed
villages, abounding in blonde girls, so rare elsewhere in Italy, but
here so numerous as to give Titian that type from which he painted.

At Oliero we learned not only which was the road to the Sette Communi,
but that we were in it, and it was settled that w