At Christmas, all the Roman world which has a _baiocco_ in its pocket eats _torone_ and _pan giallo._ The shops of the pastry-cooks and confectioners are filled with them, mountains of them incumber the counters, and for days before Christmas crowds of purchasers throng to buy them. _Torone_ is a sort of hard candy, made of honey and almonds, and crusted over with crystallized sugar; or in other words, it is a _nuga_ with a sweet frieze coat;--but _nuga_ is a trifle to it for consistency. _Pan giallo_ is perhaps so called _quasi lucus,_ it being neither bread nor yellow. I know no way of giving a clearer notion of it than by saying that its father is almond-candy and its mother a plum-pudding. It partakes of the qualities of both its parents. From its mother it inherits plums and citron, while its father bestows upon it almonds and consistency. In hardness of character it is half-way between the two,--having neither the maternal tenderness on the one hand, nor the paternal stoniness on the other. One does not break one's teeth on it as over the _torone,_ which is only to be cajoled into masticability by prolonged suction, and often not then; but the teeth sink into it as the wagoner's wheels into clayey mire, and every now and then receive a shock, as from sunken rocks, from the raisin-stones, indurated almonds, pistachio-nuts, and pine-seeds, which startle the ignorant and innocent eater with frightful doubts. I carried away one tooth this year over my first piece; but it was a tooth which had been considerably indebted to California, and I have forgiven the _pan giallo._ My friend the Conte Cignale, who partook at the same time of _torone,_ having incautiously put a large lump into his mouth, found himself compromised thereby to such an extent as to be at once reduced to silence and retirement behind his pocket-handkerchief. An unfortunate jest, however, reduced him to extremities, and, after a vehement struggle for politeness, he was forced to open the window and give his _torone_ to the pavement--and the little boys, perhaps. _Chi sa?_ But, despite these dangers and difficulties, all the world at Rome eats _pan giallo_ and _torone_ at Christmas,--and a Christmas without them would be an egg without salt. They are at once a penance and a pleasure. Not content with the _pan giallo,_ the Romans also import the _pan forte di Siena,_ which is a blood cousin of the former, and suffers almost nothing from time and age.