M. de Caselis here parted company with us and tarried in Padua on a pension of seven crowns a month for good food and lodging. He might have taken his valet for five crowns; the pensions here are of the highest class and frequented by the best of company, for instance the Sieur de Millan, son of M. de Salignac. As a rule the guests have no servants of their own, but are served by the valet of the house, or by women. Each guest has an excellent room, and finds his own fuel and light; the catering, as we had reason to know, being very good. Living in this manner is exceedingly cheap, and this in my opinion is the reason why so many strangers who are no longer students resort hither. It is not the custom to ride through the streets or to be attended by servants. In Germany we noted that all men down to the hand workers carried swords, a practice not adopted in this country. After dinner on Sunday, November 12, we went to see the baths to the right of the city, going to Abano[19] direct. This is a small village at the very foot of the mountains. Three or four hundred paces beyond it is a rocky plateau, somewhat higher than the ground adjacent, and on this elevation, which is of considerable extent, several springs of hot water issue from the rocks, which water cannot be used at the source for the bath--and much less for drinking--on account of its great heat. Wherever it runs it leaves a grey trace like burnt cinder and a heavy deposit which resembles petrified sponge, its taste being salt and sulphurous. Indeed the whole region is perfumed thereby, for the brooks, which run in all directions over the level ground, convey to a great distance the heat and the smell aforesaid. Two or three small houses, ill enough furnished, serve the needs of the patients, the water being brought to the baths in the houses by channels from the springs. Exhalations rise not only from the water itself, but also from every crack and crevice of the rocks, which give out heat everywhere, so that the people there have dug out certain places in which a man may lie down and get the heat of the exhalations and fall into a sweat. M. de Montaigne took a little of the water in his mouth, after it had lost its excessive heat by standing awhile, and found it tasted more of salt than of anything else.