They are the impoverished heirs of a great time; its garments cling to
them, but their rooms are too large for the modern penury. I found
these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall, as they might do in a
palace. I found high, painted ceilings and many things of marble, a
vast kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses - at the
service of a handful of contented, unknown men. So in England, when we
have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the
faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished
squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great
pictures, and there will be offices or granaries in the galleries of
our castles; and where Lord Saxonthorpe (whose real name is
Hauptstein) now plans our policy, common Englishmen will return to the
simpler life, and there will be dogs, and beer, and catches upon
winter evenings. For Italy also once gathered by artifice the wealth
that was not of her making.
He was a good man, the innkeeper of this palace. He warmed me at his
fire in his enormous kitchen, and I drank Malaga to the health of the
cooks. I ate of their food, I bought a bottle of a new kind of sweet
wine called 'Vino Dolce', and - I took the road.
LECTOR. And did you see nothing of Piacenza?
AUCTOR. Nothing, Lector; it was raining, and there was mud.
