Presently we swerved from the main road, and crossed the valley bed,
obedient to the map, which was our only guide to Piedimulera. We
passed one or two romantically placed, ancient villages, each of which
I hoped might be our goal; but, as usual in life, the town for which
we were bound did not appear as alluring as other towns, where we had
no need to stop.
"I feel there will be not so much as the ghost of a long-perished
Roman mule in this hamlet," I said despondently, hoping that Molly
would contradict me. But she, too, looked anxious, now that the great
moment had come, for we were driving into a town, at the mouth of a
deep gorge already dusky with purpling shadows, and there was no doubt
that it was Piedimulera.
The gloom of the twilight settled upon our spirits, dissimulate as we
might, as the car swept into the cobble-paved courtyard of an
_albergo_, a venerable grandfather of a hostelry, old, grim, and
forbidding. Out came a large, fair man to welcome us, with calculation
in his cold grey eye. He looked to me like a spider in his web,
greeting some inviting flies. We broke the ice by asking for coffee,
and when we were told that we must have it without milk, as there were
no cows within a radius of many miles, I would have staked all my
possessions (especially those acquired at Bern) that there would be no
such comparatively useless animals as mules or donkeys.
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