They looked
round briskly at J----- and me, but were courteous, as Italians always
are, and made way for us to pass through the throng, as we kept on still
ascending the steep street. It took us but a few minutes to reach the
still steeper and winding pathway which climbs towards the old castle.
After ascending above the village, the path, though still paved, becomes
very rough, as if the hoofs of Ghino di Tacco's robber cavalry had
displaced the stones and they had never been readjusted. On every side,
too, except where the path just finds space enough, there is an enormous
rubbish of huge stones, which seems to have fallen from the precipice
above, or else to have rained down out of the sky. We kept on, and by
and by reached what seemed to have been a lower outwork of the castle on
the top; there was the massive old arch of a gateway, and a great deal of
ruin of man's work, beside the large stones that here, as elsewhere, were
scattered so abundantly. Within the wall and gateway just mentioned,
however, there was a kind of farm-house, adapted, I suppose, out of the
old ruin, and I noticed some ears of Indian corn hanging out of a window.
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