valets, only a general servant for the house, or else maids; every one has a nice bedroom, but fire and lights in the bedroom are extra. The accommodation was very good, and you can live there very reasonably, and that, I think, is the reason why many strangers go there to live, even those who are not students." VENICE. Here he dined with the French ambassador "very well;" among other things "that the ambassador told him this seemed odd, that he had no social relations whatever with anybody in the city, because the people were so suspicious that a [Venetian] gentleman who should speak to him twice would fall under distrust." One is inclined, however, considering the fate of Milan, to regard a certain distrust of foreigners as not unnatural. Montaigne thought that the four most remarkable things about Venice were the situation, the police, the Piazza of St. Mark's, and the crowds of foreigners. He received as a gift a little book of "Letters" from a Venetian lady, one of that celebrated class of Venetian women who were outside the matrimonial pale yet lived in ostentatious luxury, recognized by the government and by masculine society. This lady at mid-life had changed her ways and devoted herself to literature, and hearing of the famous French author, sent him her book. Returning by way of Padua, Montaigne passed the sulphur springs, frequented in May and August by the fashionable sick, who took mud or vapour baths and drank the waters. He noted the canals; the system of irrigation in the plains, where rows of vine-laden trees intersected fields of wheat; the big, strong, gray oxen; the broad mud flats, once swamps, which the government was struggling to reclaim. ROVIGO, a little town in Venetian territory near the Adige. "There is as great abundance of meat here as in France, whatever it may be the custom to say, and though they use no lard for the roast, they do not take away the savour. The bedrooms, because there is no glass and they don't shut the windows, are not so clean as in France; the beds are better made, smoother, and well supplied with mattresses, but they have nothing but coarse coverings, and they are very sparing of white sheets; if a man travels alone, or with little style, he won't get any. It is about as dear as in France, or a little dearer." He crossed the Po, as he had crossed the Adige, upon some kind of pontoon bridge, and went on to