It is good to go through the air, with the strength of a brave horse under one, to know that his strong muscles are stretching with an enjoyment as keen as his rider's pleasure, to hear the air whistle as one cuts through it, and to feel the blood fairly dance in the veins. After those weary weeks of illness, of inaction, and of mental despair I had passed through, it was as if new life was poured into me, to know that I was once more in the saddle, with a prospect, however faint, of regaining all I had lost. As the landscape on each side of me melted into a green grey streak, it seemed to carry away with it my suffering; as the true horse answered willingly to the touch of my spur, I forgot the past, and was once again Ugo di Savelli, with a spirit as high as the days before the black sorrow fell upon me. To the left of the road was a broad stretch of springy turf, crossed by a fairly wide water channel. I could not resist giving the beast a burst over this, and followed by Jacopo, galloped over it with a free rein. Both the horses took the jump like bucks, and carried away by the moment, we held on, until we reached the stony and boulder-covered incline which led to the valley of the Greve. Here the turf came to a sudden end, in a line such as the edge of a calm sea makes in a bay, and then began a steep descent of gravel, and loose stones, whose many colours of grey, ochre, and brown, were splashed here and there, by masses of short thick shrubs, which gradually increased in denseness, until they spread before us, a sea of sombre green, that stretched to the clear blue line of the Greve. Here on the crest of the slope I drew bridle, thinking the horses had enough of it for the present, and that it would be well to husband their strength. Jacopo pulled up alongside of me, and stooping to pat the neck of his mount said-- "Excellency, the horses are in good condition; they will carry us well to Leghorn!" He spoke the truth, for although they might have been in better training, as the few clots of yellowy white foam, on the part of the reins which had touched their necks showed, still we should have been content with less, from new and practically untried purchases, such as we had made, and I congratulated myself mentally on our luck, for Barabbas himself would have had much to learn from the horse-dealers of Tuscany. Thinking in this way, I replied: "Yes, Jacopo, they seem to be a cheap forty crowns' worth, and we have been cheated as little as possible. As you say, they should carry us well on our journey, and we can either dispose of them at Leghorn, or take them on to Rome if necessary." "If I may speak, excellency, I would advise taking them with us. But oh, signore, is that not superb?"