iled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at
once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed
in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking
cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence,
and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above
said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most
permanent feature in the Italian character. The good people!

When I woke and rose I was the first to be up and out. It was high
morning. The sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I
had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed
new and full of a merry mind. The sky was coloured like that high
metal work which you may see in the studios of Paris; there was gold
in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver. A
little morning breeze, courageous and steady, blew down the lake and
provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was nothing that did not
move and take pleasure in the day.

The Lake of Lugano is of a complicated shape, and has many arms. It is
at this point very narrow indeed, and shallow too; a mole, pierced at
either end with low arches, has here been thrown across it, and by
this mole the railway and the road pass over to the eastern shore. I
turned in this long causeway and noticed the northern view. On the
farther shore was an old village and some pleasure-houses of rich men
on the shore; the boats also were beginning to go about the water.
These boats were strange, unlike other boats; they were covered with
hoods, and looked like floating waggons. This was to shield the rowers
from the sun. Far off a man was sailing with a little brown
sprit-sail. It was morning, and all the world was alive.

Coffee in the village left me two francs and two pennies. I still
thought the thing could be done, so invigorating and deceiving are the
early hours, and coming farther down the road to an old and beautiful
courtyard on the left, I drew it, and hearing a bell at hand I saw a
tumble-down church with trees before it, and went in to Mass; and
though it was a little low village Mass, yet the priest had three
acolytes to serve it, and (true and gracious mark of a Catholic
country!) these boys were restless and distracted at their office.

You may think it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. One of the
acolytes had half his head clean shaved! A most extraordinary sight! I
co