On our departure from this place we passed a very fine house belonging to a Paduan gentleman, where M. le Cardinal d’Este[24] was then sojourning. He was sick with gout and had been there more than two months for the sake of the baths, but more on account of the near vicinity of the ladies of Venice and all sorts of diversion. Thence we travelled eight miles to Bataille,[25] where we arrived in time for bed. This is a small village on the canal of Fraichine[26] which, having not more than two or three feet of water, is navigated by boats of a very strange fashion. There we were served on earthen dishes and on plates of wood and not of pewter, but otherwise we did not fare badly. On the Monday morning I myself[27] went on ahead with the mule while the others visited the baths[28] situated some five hundred paces distant along the bank of the canal. From M. de Montaigne’s description, they found there only one bath-house, with ten or twelve chambers. In May and August a number of visitors come, but these for the most part lodge in the village or in the castle of Seigneur Pic, where also lodged M. le Cardinal d’Este. The bathwater comes down from a small mountain ridge, and runs through channels into the houses below. The patients do not drink thereof but rather of the water of S. Pierre[29] which is fetched for them. The water in its descent from the ridge runs beside other channels of good sweet water, and it is hotter or colder in ratio to the length of its course. M. de Montaigne was for investigating the source up above, but no one could point it out to him, and indeed it appeared that it had a subterraneous origin. He found that it left little taste in the mouth, like that of S. Pierre, and that it was scarcely sulphurous or salt at all; moreover, that its effect when drunk would resemble that of the water aforesaid. In the bath-house there are other chambers where the water only comes in by drops under which any affected member is placed, and they told M. de Montaigne that the forehead was the part most often treated for ailments of the head. At certain points on these channels small cabins of stone have been constructed, to which the patients may repair, and having opened the hole communicating with the channel, they quickly fall into a sweat through the exhalations and heat of the water. There are also rooms for dry heat, made in various fashions, but mud baths are what they chiefly use. This treatment is practised in a large bath below the bath-house and open to the sky, fitted with a machine by which the mud is pumped up to the house adjacent. Here are provided divers appliances of wood made to fit each limb--legs, arms, thighs and other parts--wherein the member to be treated is placed and the appliance filled with mud, which is renewed as often as is needed. This mud is as black as that of Barbotan, but less full of grains and more greasy, moderately hot and quite odourless. The nearness to