A narrow stone
staircase leads from it to the dining-room, and chambers above,
which are paved with brick, and adorned with rude frescos instead of
paper-hangings. We look out of the windows, and step into a little
iron-railed balcony, before the principal window, and observe the scene
in the village street. The street is narrow, and nothing can exceed the
tall, grim ugliness of the village houses, many of them four stories
high, contiguous all along, and paved quite across; so that nature is as
completely shut out from the precincts of this little town as from the
heart of the widest city. The walls of the houses are plastered, gray,
dilapidated; the windows small, some of them drearily closed with wooden
shutters, others flung wide open, and with women's heads protruding,
others merely frescoed, for a show of light and air. It would be a
hideous street to look at in a rainy day, or when no human life pervaded
it. Now it has vivacity enough to keep it cheerful. People lounge round
the door of the albergo, and watch the horses as they drink from a stone
trough, which is built against the wall of the house, and filled with the
unseen gush of a spring.
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