s little else to see in the place, although it
is highly picturesque and the inhabitants wear a more complete costume
than any other I saw in Italy--the women, bright bodices, striped skirts
and red stockings; the men, jaunty jackets and breeches, peaked hats and
splendid sashes.

The discomfort of Perugia was luxury to what we found at Orvieto, and it
was no longer May but December, when it is nearly as cold north of Rome
as with us; and Rome was drawing us with her mighty magnet. So, one
wintry morning, soon after daybreak, we set out in a close carriage with
four horses, wrapped as if we were going in a sleigh, with a
_scaldino_ (or little brazier) under our feet, for the nearest
railway station on our route, a nine hours' drive. Our way lay through
the snow-covered hills and their leafless forest, and long after we had
left Orvieto behind again and again a rise in the road would bring it
full in sight on its base of tufa, girt by its walls, the Gothic lines
of the cathedral sharp against the clear, brightening sky. At our last
look the sun was not up, but broad shafts of light, such as painters
throw before the chariot of Phoebus, refracted against the pure aether,
spread like a halo round the threefold pinnacles: a moment more and
Orvieto was hidden behind a higher hill, not to be seen again. All day
we drove among the snow-bound hills and woods, past the Lake of Bolsena
in its forbidding beauty; past small valleys full of naked fruit trees
and shivering olives, which must be nooks of loveliness in spring; past
defiant little towns aloft on their islands of tufa, like Bagnorea with
its single slender bell-tower; past Montefiascone with its good old
story about Cardinal Fugger and the native wine.

[Illustration: CIVITA BAGNOREA.]

We stopped to lunch at Viterbo, a town more closely connected with the
history of the Papacy than any except Rome itself, and full of legends
and romantic associations: it is dirty and dilapidated, and has great
need of all its memories. Being but eight miles from Montefiascone, we
called for a bottle of the fatal Est, which we had tasted once at
Augsburg, where the host of the Three Moors has it in his cellar, in
honor perhaps of the departed Fugger family, whose palace has become his
hotel: there we had found it delicious--a wine as sweet as cordial, with
a soul of fire and a penetrating but delicate flavor of its own--how
different from the thin, sour stuff they brought us in the lon