like so much water, the not over-strong cognac intended only to flavor our coffee.

Presently the padrona entered into conversation with us. We were English, she supposed. No; Americans, we told her. At this there was great rejoicing. They had a brother in America. He lived in a large town called Buenos Ayres, where he kept a trattoria. Like theirs it was the Trattoria Boccaccio. They were glad to see any one from the same country, whether from north or south. Was it not all America? The padrona went upstairs to bring down his picture that we might see it. Her sister pointed to the purple woollen jersey she wore, and said with pride her brother had sent it to her. It too was American. They even called in their old mother, that she might see her son's fellow-countrymen.

We spent an hour wandering through the old town, on top of the hill, in which Boccaccio really lived. The sun was shining right down into the streets, in which the gay kerchiefs of the women, the bunches of straw at their waists, and their cornstalk distaffs made bright bits of color. Though we left the tricycle at the trattoria, our coming made a stir in the little place. Our clothes were not like unto those of the natives, and J.'s knee-breeches and long black stockings made them wonder what manner of priest he might be. As we stood looking at the loggia and tower and arched doorway of Boccaccio's house, the custodian, with a heavy bunch of keys, came to take us through it. But we declined his services. We cared more for the old streets and walls and palaces, which, though their greatness has gone, have not been changed since mediæval times, than for an interior, however fine, whose mediævalism dates from to-day. The old man turned rather sulkily. J., seeing there had been some mistake, explained we had not sent for him. Then his face cleared. The women had said we wanted him, else he would never have disturbed us; and he took off his hat, and this time went away with a friendly à rivederle.

The Palazzo Communale, at the highest point of the town, is still covered with the arms and insignia of other years, of the Medici and Piccolomini, of the Orsini and Baglioni. Its vaulted doorway is still decorated with frescos of the Madonna, and saints and angels. But everywhere the plaster is falling away, and in the courtyard grass grows between the bricks of the pavement; and instead of pages and men-at-arms, we there saw only a little brown-faced ragged child climbing cat-like over the roofs, and a woman scolding him from below. We left the town by the frescoed gateway, through which we saw the near hills, gray, bare, and furrowed, the long lines of cypresses, the stretches of gray olives, the valley below with its vineyards, and the far mountains, purple and shadowy, the highest topped with many-towered San Gimignano.

It is better not to be jocund with the fruitful grape in the middle of the day when one is tricycling. The cognac we had taken at lunch, weak as it was, and the vermouth made us sleepy and our feet heavy. I sympathized with the men who lay in sound slumbers in every cart we met. But their drowsiness forced us into wakefulness. Of the ride from Certaldo to Poggibonsi, I remember best the loud inarticulate cries of J. and his calls of "Eccomi!" as if he were lord of the land, to sleeping drivers. The Italian cry of the roads, rising to a high note and then suddenly falling and ending in a low prolonged one, which is indispensable to travellers, is not easy to learn. J.'s proficiency in it, however, made him pass for a native when he limited himself to howling. But often donkeys darted into ditches and oxen plunged across the road before the peasants behind them awoke. Like Sancho Panza they had a talent for sleeping.

Once, after we had climbed a short but steep hill and had passed by several wagons in rapid succession, we stopped under the shade to rest. It was a pleasant place. We looked over the broad valley, where the vines were festooned, not as Virgil saw them, from elm to elm, but from mulberry to mulberry, and up to San Gimignano, beginning to take more definite shape on its mountain-top. A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. "You have a good horse," he then said; "it eats nothing." We asked him if they were at work in his vineyard. No, he answered; but would we like to look in the wine-press opposite? And then he took us through the dark windowless building, where on one side the grape-juice was fermenting in large butts, and on the other fresh grapes had been laid on sets of shelves to dry. He picked out two of the finest bunches and gave them to me. When I offered to pay him he refused. The Signora must accept them, he said.

As the road was now a dead level and lumpy into the bargain, we were glad when Poggibonsi was in sight. We drew up on a bridge where a man was standing, to ask him if he knew of a good inn. He recommended the Albergo dell' Aquila. "It is good," he went on, "and not too dear. This is not a town where they take one by the neck," and he clutched his own throat. So to the Albergo dell'Aquila we went. We had only to ride through the wide avenue of shady trees, past a row of houses, out of one of which a brown-robed monk came, to rush back at sight of us, past a washing-place surrounded by busy chattering women, and we were at the door of the inn.

AT POGGIBONSI.