the
exception of the very small portion reserved for the Signori, when they
visit Pienza, the palace has become a granary for country produce in a
starveling land. There was one redeeming point about it to my mind. That
was the handsome young man, with earnest Tuscan eyes and a wonderfully
sweet voice, the servant of the Piccolomini family, who lives here with
his crippled father, and who showed us over the apartments.

We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the same wrinkled
wilderness of marl; wasteful, uncultivated, bare to every wind that
blows. A cruel blast was sweeping from the sea, and Monte Amiata
darkened with rain clouds. Still the pictures, which formed themselves
at intervals, as we wound along these barren ridges, were very fair to
look upon, especially one, not far from S. Quirico. It had for
foreground a stretch of tilth--olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and
cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and blue
air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs and tufted
woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia; eagles' nests emerging from
a fertile valley-champaign, into which the eye was led for rest. It so
chanced that a band of sunlight, escaping from filmy clouds, touched
this picture with silvery greys and soft greens--a suffusion of vaporous
radiance, which made it for one moment a Claude landscape.

S. Quirico was keeping _festa_. The streets were crowded with healthy
handsome men and women from the contado. This village lies on the edge
of a great oasis in the Sienese desert--an oasis, formed by the waters
of the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on
to Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the "Two Hares," where a notable
housewife gave us a dinner of all we could desire; _frittata di
cervelle_, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with rosemary, salad and
cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at the rate of three
_lire_ a head.

The attraction of S. Quirico is its gem-like little collegiata, a
Lombard church of the ninth century, with carved portals of the
thirteenth. It is built of golden travertine; some details in brown
sandstone. The western and southern portals have pillars resting on the
backs of lions. On the western side these pillars are four slender
columns, linked by snake-like ligatures. On the southern side they
consist of two carved figures--possibly S. John and the Archangel
Michael. There is great freedom and beauty