This city is everywhere adorned with fine rich porticoes and a multitude of beautiful palaces. The cost of living here was very cheap, about the same as at Padua, but the city is turbulent in some of the older parts, which are divided between the ancient families of the city, some of whom favour the French[38] and others the Spaniards, who abound. In the great square is a very beautiful fountain.[39] On Sunday M. de Montaigne had made up his mind to take the left-hand road towards Imola, the March of Ancona and Loreto, on the way to Rome, but a certain German told him that he had been plundered by outlaws in the duchy of Spoleto,[40] so he followed the highway to the right to Florence. We found ourselves at once on a rough road and in a mountainous country. After a sixteen-mile journey we rested for the night at Loyan,[41] a small and disagreeable village. In this place are only two hostelries, and these are famous all through Italy for the ill-faith there kept with travellers; how the host regales them with fair promises of all sorts of good cheer before they alight, and afterwards, when the strangers are at his mercy, will laugh in their faces. Concerning this are some well-known proverbs. We left early next morning and travelled till evening over a road which, certes, was the only bad one we had yet met with. The mountains too gave more trouble than in any other part of our journeying. We lay that night, after riding four-and-twenty miles, at Scarperia, a small village of Tuscany. Here they sell cases of needles and scissors and other similar wares. M. de Montaigne was there greatly diverted over the dispute of the innkeepers. These people are wont to despatch lackeys distances of seven or eight leagues to meet strangers, and to urge them to alight at their employer’s inn. It is no rare thing to find the host himself on horseback, and often a troop of men finely clad will follow on your track. All along this road M. de Montaigne was fain to jest with them, being vastly amused at the various offers every one of them made to him, and there was nothing they would not promise. One went so far as to offer the gift of a hare if only he would patronise a particular inn. This wrangle and grabbing ceased whenever we reached the town gates, beyond which they dare not say a word on the subject.