There are domestic proverbs which originate in incidents known only to the natives of their province. Italian literature is particularly rich in these stores. The lively proverbial taste of that vivacious people was transferred to their own authors; and when these allusions were obscured by time, learned Italians, in their zeal for their national literature, and in their national love of story-telling, have written grave commentaries even on ludicrous, but popular tales, in which the proverbs are said to have originated. They resemble the old facetious _contes_, whose simplicity and humour still live in the pages of Boccaccio, and are not forgotten in those of the Queen of Navarre. The Italians apply a proverb to a person who while he is beaten, takes the blows quietly:-- _Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!_ Luckily they were not peaches! And to threaten to give a man-- _Una pesca in un occhio._ A peach in the eye, means to give him a thrashing. This proverb, it is said, originated in the close of a certain droll adventure. The community of the Castle Poggibonsi, probably from some jocular tenure observed on St. Bernard's day, pay a tribute of peaches to the court of Tuscany, which are usually shared among the ladies in waiting, and the pages of the court. It happened one season, in a great scarcity of peaches, that the good people of Poggibonsi, finding them rather dear, sent, instead of the customary tribute, a quantity of fine juicy figs, which was so much disapproved of by the pages, that as soon as they got hold of them, they began in rage to empty the baskets on the heads of the ambassadors of the Poggibonsi, who, in attempting to fly as well as they could from the pulpy shower, half-blinded, and recollecting that peaches would have had stones in them, cried out-- _Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!_ Luckily they were not peaches! _Fare le scalee di Sant' Ambrogio_; "To mount the stairs of Saint Ambrose," a proverb allusive to the business of the school of scandal. Varchi explains it by a circumstance so common in provincial cities. On summer evenings, for fresh air and gossip, the loungers met on the steps and landing-places of the church of St. Ambrose: whoever left the party, "they read in his book," as our commentator expresses it; and not a leaf was passed over! All liked to join a party so well informed of one another's concerns, and every one tried to be the very last to quit it,--not "to leave his character behind!" It became a proverbial phrase with those who left a company, and were too tender of their backs, to request they would not "mount the stairs of St. Ambrose." Jonson has well described such a company: You are so truly fear'd, but not beloved One of another, as no one dares break Company from the rest, lest they should fall Upon him absent.