The Umbrian plain was beautiful and fertile, with grains and fruits in abundance, the whole country rich beyond description. So, too, had been the Roman Campagna, but that was not tenanted, for its owners, the Roman barons, had let it to merchant farmers, who did not maintain peasants there, but in harvest time hired husbandmen from all over Italy, to the number of forty thousand, to gather in the crops. From FOLIGNO he turned to the right and crossed the Apennines just below Assisi, and travelled toward the Adriatic coast, making a pilgrimage to LORETO, a place like Lourdes, celebrated for its miracles, and for the "very same little house in which Jesus Christ was born in Nazareth." Here he found the people much more religious than elsewhere; even the attendants in the Church were ready to do anything, and would accept no tips. Thence he went to ANCONA, SINIGAGLIA, URBINO, where he inspected the famous palace begun by Federigo da Montefeltro; then back to FLORENCE, once more to admire the beautiful villas which decked the hills round about, and on to PRATO and PISTOIA, stagnating little towns, whose civic life had been crushed out by the Medici. So he rode on through lovely country, where long lines of little trees, trellised with vines, divided the rich fields of grain, skirting the hills covered with olive, mulberry, and chestnut, till he reached LUCCA, which had saved itself from the clutch of the Medici by clinging to the skirts of Austria. Lucca, girdled by fortifications worthy of a most martial ardour, maintained a comfortable prosperity by the manufacture of silk; but here, as elsewhere, it was becoming unfashionable to engage in trade, partly on account of decreasing returns and the general waning of energy, and partly from Spanish influences. Gentlemen retired from business, invested their money in landed estates, and were rapidly tending to become the characters which we find in Goldoni's comedies. From Lucca Montaigne went to the BATHS OF LUCCA and took the cure for near two months. He found the country lovely, but society a little slow; most of the men were apothecaries. After the cure he made another tour southward, then back to Lucca for more baths, from there northward, on the road to Milan, stopping at PONTREMOLI. At the inn in this place, the dinner began with cheese _alla milanese_, included a dish of olives, their pits taken out, dressed with oil and vinegar _alla genovese_; on a bench stood one basin in which all the guests washed their hands in the same water, _alla pontremolese_. From there he crossed the Apennines, where the mountaineers, horrid people, charged them most cruel prices, and went on into the duchy of Parma, where Alessandro Farnese, the great general, was the reigning duke. At PIACENZA, the King of Spain, out of his abundant caution, still maintained a Spanish garrison in the castle, "badly paid as they told me." Thence they proceeded into the duchy of Milan.