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Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens
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loaves--one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry
afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine. There is
not much in the dishes; but they are very good, and always ready
instantly. When it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten
the two cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large
decanter of oil, and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat
below, and proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower
frowns down upon the court-yard of the inn. Off we go; and very
solemn and grand it is, in the dim light: so dim at last, that the
polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of
candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs with--and looks among
the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his
own.

Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of
the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a
stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron
cauldron it was boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and
are very merry; merrier than the gentleman with the red beard, who
is playing billiards in the light room on the left of the yard,
where shadows, with cues in their hands, and cigars in their
mouths, cross and recross the window, constantly. Still the thin
Cure walks up and down alone, with his book and umbrella. And
there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we
are fast asleep.

We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming
yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a
carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody
is brisk; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into
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