\ Bergamo 243 



him, I shall not have so good opinion of his head as I think I 

 shall always have of his heart. This chamber of Vaprio is con- 

 trast sufficient to his in the Palazzo Cusina. I cannot write, so 

 nust nestle in this nidus of fleas and bugs which they call a 

 bed. — 20 miles. 



i6ih. So much rain has fallen in the night that the Adda has 

 rsen too much to permit a carriage to reach the ferry; we 

 waited, therefore, four hours till the water sunk. This is a cir- 

 cumstance to which a traveller is liable every day in Italy; for 

 the rivers are so little under command that a night's heaw rain 

 will stop him. An impatient traveller, waiting on the banks of 

 a river for the water's flowing, might, by equal genius, be set off 

 as well in poetry as a patient one is represented expecting till all 

 was passed. — The environs of the Adda here are fine; on the side 

 of the Vaprio, high land, that commands the wooded vale. 

 Arrive, at last, at Bergamo. I had a letter to Dr. Maironi da 

 Ponte, secretary of the academy of Bergamo, to whom I went 

 directly. I mounted a steep hill into the city, which is on the 

 top of it, and searched hard for the doctor; after examining 

 several streets, a lady from a window who seemed to pity my 

 perplexity (for I had been conducted to three or four streets in 

 vain) informed me that he was in the country, — but that if I 

 returned in the morning I should have a chance of seeing him. 

 What a black, dirty, stinking, dismal place! I stared at some 

 well-dressed people I met, wondering what they had to do there ; 

 thanking my stars that I was not an inhabitant of Bergamo; 

 foolishly enough, as if it were the brick and mortar of a place that 

 give felicity, and not the connections formed from infancy and 

 matured by habit. — 12 miles. 



ijih. Mount the hill again, in search for Signore Maironi; 

 and hearing he has a brother, to find him, should I fail. I 

 repaired to the street where the lady gave me information the 

 night before ; she was luckily at her window, but the intelligence 

 cross to my wishes, for both the brothers were in the country; 

 I need not go to the door, she said, for there were no servants in 

 the house. The dusk of the evening in this dark town had last 

 night veiled the fair incognita, but looking a second time now, I 

 found her extremely pretty, with a pair of eyes that shone in 

 unison with something better than a street of Bergamo. She 

 asked me kindly after my business, Spero che non e un grande 

 mancamento ? words of no import, but uttered with a sweetness 

 of voice that rendered the poorest monosyllable interesting. I 

 told her that the bosom must be cold from which her presence 



