XXXII 



EN GLAND is so seldom visited by hot weather such as we 

 now have, that, especially in our little place with its foreign 

 stamp within and without, one keeps thinking of other lands. 

 There was the one hot summer we went visiting in country 

 houses in Italy two country houses, to be precise, and 

 both of them were " castelli." 



The first <which we preferred vastly) was on a high plateau 

 in the middle of the Piedmontese plain, not far from Turin. 

 From that entrancing spot the view lay over wide undu- 

 lating stretches of maize fields and vineyards / and the eye 

 could not turn North, West, East or South without 

 resting on a distant panorama of Alps or Apennines. 

 That was a hot summer with a vengeance ! We were met 

 in the dusk of the evening the soft warm dusk of such 

 days in Italy, when the caress of the air is like the touch of 

 velvet by a gay little equipage drawn by three mountain 

 horses abreast, each with a collar of bells and a red hussar 

 plume erect on its forehead. It was the most merry vehicle 

 we have ever driven in. How those horses went ! How 

 they tossed their heads and how their bells jangled ! 

 A beautiful old French style castello it was, by no means 

 spoilt in our eyes by having been left with rough brick. 

 Now we hear that its ambitious owners have faced it with 

 stone and are themselves charmed with the result. No 

 doubt its original picturesqueness had its disadvantages, 

 for innumerable birds built under the eaves amid those 

 rough bricks. At the approach of any vehicle the air was 

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