We Arrived At Voghera To Breakfast And At Casteggio At Night.
The country
is much the same as that which we have already passed thro', being a plain,
with a rich alluvial soil, mulberry trees and a number of solidly built
stone farmhouses.
The next morning at eleven o'clock we arrived at Piacenza
on the Po, and were detained a quarter of an hour at the Douane of Her
Majesty the Archduchess, as Maria Louisa, the present Duchess of Parma, is
stiled, we being now arrived in her dominions. We drove to the Hotel di
San Marco, which is close to the Piazza Grande, and alighted there. On
the Piazza stands the Hotel de Ville, and in front of it are two
equestrian statues in bronze of the Princes Farnesi; the statues, however,
of the riders appear much too small in proportion with the horses, and they
resemble two little boys mounted on Lincolnshire carthorses.
I did not visit the churches and palaces in this city from not having time
and, besides, I did not feel myself inclined or bound (as some travellers
think themselves) to visit every church and every town in Italy. I really
believe the ciceroni think that we Ultramontani live in mud hovels in
our own country, and that we have never seen a stone edifice, till our
arrival in Italy, for every town house which is not a shop is termed a
palazzo, and they would conduct you to see all of them if you would be
guided by them. I had an opportunity, during the two hours we halted here,
of walking over the greater part of the city, after a hasty breakfast.
Piacenza is a large handsome city; among the females that I saw in the
streets the Spanish costume seems very prevalent, no doubt from being so
long governed by a Spanish family.
On leaving Piacenza we passed thro' a rich meadow country and met with an
immense quantity of cattle grazing. The road is a fine broad chaussee
considerably elevated above the level of the fields and is lined with
poplars. Where this land is not in pasture, cornfields and mulberry trees,
with vines in festoons, vary the landscape, which is additionally enlivened
by frequent maisons de plaisance and excellently built farmhouses. We
passed thro' Firenzuola, a long well-built village, or rather bourg, and
we brought to the night at Borgo San Donino. At this place I found the
first bad inn I have met with in Italy, that is, the house, tho' large, was
so out of repair as to be almost a masure; we however met with tolerably
good fare for supper. We fell in with a traveller at Borgo San Donino, who
related to us an account of an extraordinary robbery that had been
committed a few months before near this place, in which the then host was
implicated, or rather was the author and planner of the robbery. It
happened as follows. A Swiss merchant, one of those men who cannot keep
their own counsel, a bavard in short, was travelling from Milan to
Bologna with his cabriolet, horse and a large portmanteau.
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