He immediately set down this distich under them:
Our poor little town has no little to brag,
The Emperor was here, and he dined at the Stag.
The people of the inn concluding that this must be a high-strained
compliment, it produced him many thanks from all, and a better breakfast
than he would otherwise have obtained at Tuillemont.
To-morrow we go forward to Bologna.
BOLOGNA
SEEMS at first sight a very sorrowful town, and has a general air of
melancholy that surprises one, as it is very handsomely and regularly
built; and set in a country so particularly beautiful, that it is not
easy to express the nature of its beauty, and to express it so that
those who inhabit other countries can understand me.
The territory belonging to Bologna la Grassa concenters all its charms
in a happy _embonpoint_, which leaves no wrinkle unfilled up, no bone to
be discerned; like the fat figure of Gunhilda at Fonthill, painted by
Chevalier Cafali, with a face full of woe, but with a sleekness of skin
that denotes nothing less than affliction. From the top of the only
eminence, one looks down here upon a country which to me has a new and
singular appearance; the whole horizon appearing one thick carpet of the
softest and most vivid green, from the vicinity of the broad-leaved
mulberry trees, I trust, drawn still closer and closer together by
their amicable and pacific companions the vines, which keep cluttering
round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately
or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals
who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the
philosopher for speculation.
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