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Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens
page 85 of 240 (35%)
confusion. She cut our embarrassment very short, however, by
crossing herself devoutly, and going down, at full length, on her
face, before a figure in a fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which
was so like one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at this
hour she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision.
Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her her interest in the
Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor.

There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, in
the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to see
the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena took
away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and
about which there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by TASSONE,
too. Being quite content, however, to look at the outside of the
tower, and feast, in imagination, on the bucket within; and
preferring to loiter in the shade of the tall Campanile, and about
the cathedral; I have no personal knowledge of this bucket, even at
the present time.

Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man (or the
Guide-Book) would have considered that we had half done justice to
the wonders of Modena. But it is such a delight to me to leave new
scenes behind, and still go on, encountering newer scenes--and,
moreover, I have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights
that are cut, and dried, and dictated--that I fear I sin against
similar authorities in every place I visit.

Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna, I found
myself walking next Sunday morning, among the stately marble tombs
and colonnades, in company with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted
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