Tables, raised on trestles, appear to line the road. The people, in innumerable masses, are eating, drinking, singing, shouting, and acting plays in the open air. Even preaching is not neglected; for more than one pulpit has been improvisated between the theatres and wine-shops; from which hosts of greasy monks, not satisfied with giving their benediction to the passengers, and exhorting them to temperance and sobriety, gratify their avarice by the sale of consecrated chaplets, and little virgins, carved in ivory. In the long and only street of the village of Marengo, every house, transformed into an inn, presents a scene of noise and confusion. To every window, the eyes of the spectators are attracted by strings of smoked hams or sausages; of quails or red partridges, or pyramids of gingerbread and cakes. People are pushing in, or pushing out at every door; Italians and French, soldiers or peasants; heaps of maccaroni, of marchpane, and other dainties, are beginning to disappear. In the dark and narrow staircases, people rub quarrelsomely against each other; some even compelled, by the rapacity of their neighbours, to raise over their heads the food they are carrying; while a cleverer hand and longer arm than their own, makes off, unperceived, with the savoury burden: whether a buttered loaf, figs, grapes, oranges, a Turin ham, a larded quail, a force-meat pie, or an excellent _stufato_, in its tureen; when cries of indignation, or shrieks of distress, accompanied by mockeries and loud laughter, resound on every side. The thief, in the ascending line upon the staircase, satisfied with his plunder, tries to turn back and run away. The victim, in the descending line, robbed of his dinner, attempts to return, and furnish himself with new provisions; and the flux and reflux of the crowd, disorganized by these irregular movements, is pushed partly into the street, and partly into the warehouse on the second story, amid oaths, imprecations, and peals of laughter; while their discomfiture is hailed, with added uproar, by the drinkers already established in the wine-shops of the ground floor, in defiance of the sage counsels of the monks. From one room to another, among tables covered with dishes and surrounded with guests, are seen circulating the hostess and _giannine_, or waitresses of the house; some with gay-coloured aprons, powdered hair, and the coquettish little poniard, which forms part of their holiday costume; others with short petticoats, long braids of hair, naked feet, and a thousand glittering ornaments of tinsel or gold. But to these animated scenes in the village or the road—the chamber or the street—to these cries, songs, exclamations, the noise of music, dancing, talking, and the jingling of plates and glasses, other sounds of a different nature are about to succeed.