Then secondly there was the "Villa," about a mile higher up the lovely
little valley of the Lima, so called because the Duke's villa was
situated there. The Villa had more the pretension--a very little
more--of looking something like a little bit of town. At least it had
its one street paved. The ducal villa was among the woods immediately
above it.

The third little group of buildings and lodging-houses was called the
"Bagni Caldi." The hotter, and, I fancy, the original springs were
there, and it was altogether more retired and countrified, nestling
closely among the chesnut woods. The whole surrounding country indeed
is one great chesnut forest, and the various little villages, most of
them picturesque in the highest degree, which crown the summits of the
surrounding hills, are all of them closely hedged in by the chesnut
woods, which clothe the slopes to the top. These villages burrow in
what they live on like mice in a cheese, for many of the inhabitants
never taste any other than chesnut flour bread from year's end to
year's end.

The inhabitants of these hills, and indeed those of the duchy
generally, have throughout Italy the reputation of being morally about
the best population in the peninsula. Servants from the Lucchese, and
especially from the district I am here speaking of, were, and are
still, I believe, much prized. Lucca, as many readers will remember,
enjoys among all the descriptive epithets popularly given to the
different cities of Italy, that of _Lucca la industriosa_.

To us migratory English those singularly picturesque villages which
capped all the hills, and were reached by curiously ancient paved mule
paths zig-sagging up among the chesnut woods, seemed to have been