But When Siena Grew Intolerable - A Stark,
Ill-Provisioned Place; You Will Look In Vain For A Respectable Grocer Or
Butcher; The Wine Leaves Much To Be Desired; Indeed, It Has All The
Drawbacks Of Florence And None Of Its Advantages - Why, Then We Fled Into
Mr. Edward Hutton's Unknown Tuscany.
There, at Abbadia San Salvatore
(though the summit of Mount Amiata did not come up to expectation) we at
Last felt cool again, wandering amid venerable chestnuts and wondrously
tinted volcanic blocks, mountain-fragments, full of miniature glens and
moisture and fernery - a green twilight, a landscape made for fairies....
Was this the same Siena from which we once escaped to get cool? Muffled
up to the ears, with three waistcoats on, I move in and out of doors,
endeavouring to discover whether there be any appreciable difference in
temperature between the external air and that of my bedroom. There
cannot be much to choose between them. They say I am the only foreigner
now in Siena. That, at least, is a distinction, a record. Furthermore,
no matches, not even of the sulphur variety, were procurable in any of
the shops for the space of three days; that also, I imagine, cannot yet
have occurred within the memory of living man.
While stamping round the great Square yesterday to keep my feet warm, a
Florentine addressed me; a commercial gentleman, it would seem. He
disapproved of this square - it was not regular in shape, it was not even
level.
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