It was almost dark and quite cool when we returned to our inn, and to a dinner which is worthy of record.
It commenced with some good chicken broth, after which followed an entrée of half a boiled fowl. This was succeeded by the third course, made up of the other half of the fowl, nicely stewed; and, after some boiled peas, the meal closed with the pièce de résistance of a whole roast fowl!
Broccia and dessert succeeded, whilst our minds were engaged in a melancholy cogitation as to whether the three courses of the immortal Gladstone bore any resemblance to these.
But we had not yet solved this perplexing question, when the anticipation of a seven-o'clock breakfast and early walk on the morrow, sent us to bed amid serenades of countless nightingales; varied by the less agreeable concert of two poor children in the agonies of hooping-cough on one side,—two or three snoring women with cast-iron lungs on the other,—and, overhead, a lively family, consisting of a squalling baby (whose long-suffering mother found it necessary to walk it up and down incessantly), and a man whose chief nocturnal occupation appeared to be throwing his very heavy hobnailed boots from one end of the room to the other (whether to intimidate his offspring or the numerous rats I could not decide). I would willingly have strangled that baby, and put corks down the mouths of those snoring women (for the partitions of a Corsican inn are terribly thin); but the power was not mine. The varying torments had to be borne until the twitter of birds and the rosy sunlight came creeping in through the open window to bid me rise, sadder and wiser by one more experience of the comforts (?) of a night's rest in Corsica!
CHAPTER IX.
EVISA AMONG THE HILLS.
Before eight o'clock next morning we were descending the gorge opposite the house, in order to mount it on the other side, and visit the picturesque convent.
Our coffee and dry bread had been served to us at half-past seven by the "chamber-maid."
This important person was represented by a pretty rosy-cheeked girl of twelve, who combined her chamber duties with those of waitress, and who, at this stage of the morning, was attired in a déshabille of nightdress body and coloured petticoat, with bare feet. Later on, when we returned from our walk, she was in full dress, having added a white head handkerchief, black jacket, white stockings, and shoes.
This Vico walk was one of the loveliest we enjoyed in the island. The steep road that climbed up the hill-side was shaded by oak and ilex trees; numberless sparkling streams dashed down from above and beneath us, and brilliant cyclamen nestled everywhere lovingly amongst the ferns—bracken, felix mas, parsley, walrue, maidenhair, and polypodium—luxuriating on this damp hill-side.
Below us writhed the serpentine Liamone; before us rose the great brown walls of the Monte Libbio rocks; and each corner that we turned, showed new gorges, fresh wooded hills upon one side, and more exquisite ranges of steepest rocks and purest snow mountains on the other.