Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to
give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence
would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us.
Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the
same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the
little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and
running round and round it, clasping it. This seemed to make him quite
inexpressibly happy. His face lit up and beamed with that inner
beatitude blind people show--a kind of rapture shining over it, as
though nothing could be more altogether delightful. This little boy
had the smallpox at eight months, and has never been able to see
since. He looks sturdy, and may live to be of any age--doomed always,
is that possible, to beg?

CHIUSI

What more enjoyable dinner can be imagined than a flask of excellent
Montepulciano, a well-cooked steak, and a little goat's cheese in the
inn of the Leone d'Oro at Chiusi? The windows are open, and the sun is
setting. Monte Cetona bounds the view to the right, and the wooded
hills of Citta della Pieve to the left. The deep green dimpled valley
goes stretching away toward Orvieto; and at its end a purple mountain
mass, distinct and solitary, which may peradventure be Soracte! The
near country is broken into undulating hills, forested with fine
olives and oaks; and the composition of the landscape, with its
crowning villages, is worthy of a background to an Umbrian picture.
The breadth and depth and quiet which those painters loved, the space
of lucid sky, the suggestion of winding waters in verdant fields, all
are here. The evening is beautiful--golden light streaming softly from
behind us on this prospect, and gradually mellowing to violet and blue
with stars above.

At Chiusi we visited several Etruscan tombs, and saw their red and
black scrawled pictures. One of the sepulchres was a well-jointed
vault of stone with no wall-paintings. The rest had been scooped out
of the living tufa. This was the excuse for some pleasant hours spent
in walking and driving through the country. Chiusi means for me the
mingling of grey olives and green oaks in limpid sunlight; deep leafy
lanes; warm sandstone banks; copses with nightingales and cyclamens
and cuckoos; glimpses of a silvery lake; blue shadowy distances; the
bristling ridge of Monte Cetona; the conical towers, Becca di Questo
and B