A Roman beau, with a riding-whip under his
arm, was making sheep's eyes at a young local beauty, his courtship
accompanied by the whines of the surrounding beggars. A _signora_
from Albano was lecturing the waiter with the dignity of a queen for
having brought her meat that was beneath all criticism, yes, she even
let the word _porcheria_ escape her. A brown-bearded fellow came
out of the inn with a large bottle of the heavenly Frascati wine, which
the landlords here, even on festival occasions, never mix with water,
and gave a whole family, sitting on donkeys, to drink out of one glass;
then he went to two little ones, who were holding each other round the
waist, sitting on the same donkey; to two youths who were riding
another; to a man and wife, who sat on a third, and all drank, like the
horsemen in Wouwerman's pictures, without dismounting.
I got into an old, local omnibus, pulled by three horses, to drive the
two miles to Grotta Ferrata, where the fair was. But the vehicle was
hardly about to start up-hill when, with rare unanimity, the horses
reared, behaved like mad, and whirled it round four or five times. The
driver, a fellow with one eye and a grey cap with a double red camelia
in it, being drunk, thrashed the horses and shouted, while an old
American lady with ringlets shrieked inside the omnibus, and bawled out
that she had paid a franc beforehand, and now wanted to get out.
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