as I am confident they cannot be worth even two pence a hundred here, where they hang like apples in our cyder countries; but the rogues know that my husband is sick, and upon poor me they have no mercy.
I have sent our folks out to gather fruit at a venture: and now this misery will soon be ended with his illness; driven away by deluges of lemonade, I think, made in defiance of wasps, flies, and a kind of volant beetle, wonderfully beautiful and very pertinacious in his attacks; and who makes dreadful depredations on my sugar and currant-jelly, so necessary on this occasion of illness, and so attractive to all these detestable inhabitants of a place so lovely.
My patient, however, complaining that although I kept these harpies at a distance, no sleep could yet be obtained;—I resolved when he was risen, and had changed his room, to examine into the true cause: and with my maid's assistance, unript the mattress, which was without exaggeration or hyperbole all alive with creatures wholly unknown to me. Non-descripts in nastiness I believe they are, like maggots with horns and tails; such a race as I never saw or heard of, and as would
have disgusted Mr. Leeuenhoeck himself. My willingness to quit this place and its hundred-footed inhabitants was quickened three nights after by a thunder storm, such as no dweller in more northern latitudes can form an idea of; which, afflicted by some few slight shocks of an earthquake, frighted us all from our beds, sick and well, and gave me an opportunity of viewing such flashes of lightning as I had never contemplated till now, and such as it appeared impossible to escape from with life. The tremendous claps of thunder re-echoing among these Appenines, which double every sound, were truly dreadful. I really and sincerely thought St. Julian's mountain was rent by one violent stroke, accompanied with a rough concussion, and that the rock would fall upon our heads by morning; while the agonies of my English maid and the French valet, became equally insupportable to themselves and me; who could only repeat the same unheeded consolations, and protest our resolution of releasing them from this theatre of distraction the moment our departure should become practicable. Mean time the rain fell, and such a torrent came tumbling down the sides of St. Juliano, as I am
persuaded no female courage could have calmly looked on. I therefore waited its abatement in a darkened room, packed up our coach without waiting to copy over the verses my admiration of the place had prompted, and drove forward to Sienna, through Pisa again, where our friends told us of the damages done by the tempest; and shewed us a pretty little church just out of town, where the officiating priest at the altar was saved almost by miracle, as the lightning melted one of the chalices completely, and twisted the brazen-gilt crucifix quite round in a very astonishing manner.
Here, however, is the proper place, if any, to introduce the poem of seventy-three short lines, calling itself an Ode to Society written in a state of perfect solitude, secluded from all mortal tread, as was our habitation at the Bagni di Pisa.
I.
SOCIETY! gregarious dame!
Who knows thy favour'd haunts to name?
Whether at Paris you prepare
The supper and the chat to share,
While fix'd in artificial row,
Laughter displays its teeth of snow:
Grimace with raillery rejoices,
And song of many mingled voices,
Till young coquetry's artful wile
Some foreign novice shall beguile,
Who home return'd, still prates of thee,
Light, flippant, French Society.
II.