was universally agreed that, whatever the other drawbacks of Sant'
Angelo might be, there was nothing to be said against its native liquor.

It was, indeed, a divine product; a _vino di montagna_ of noble
pedigree. So I thought, as I laboriously scrambled up the stairs once
more, solaced by this incident of the competition-grotto and slightly
giddy, from the tobacco-smoke. And here, leaning against the door-post,
stood the coachman who had divined my whereabouts by some dark masonic
intuition of sympathy. His face expanded into an inept smile, and I
quickly saw that instead of fortifying his constitution with sound food,
he had tried alcoholic methods of defence against the inclement weather.
Just a glass of wine, he explained. "But," he added, "the horse is
perfectly sober."

That quadruped was equal to the emergency. Gloriously indifferent to our
fates, we glided down, in a vertiginous but masterly vol-plane, from the
somewhat objectionable mountain-town.

An approving burst of sunshine greeted our arrival on the plain.




IV

CAVE-WORSHIP


Why has the exalted archangel chosen for an abode this reeking cell,
rather than some well-built temple in the sunshine? "As symbolizing a