The largest and the most seemly of these baths is square-built with one side open, very well fitted, and having marble staircases. It measures thirty paces square, and in one corner the spring flows in through a spout. I took a draught of it to test it, and found it lacking in taste and in smell also. I only detected a slight roughness on the tongue. It is scarcely warm at all and very pleasant to drink. I looked at the water as it flowed from the spout, and perceived therein the same minute particles, white atoms, which had offended me at Baden, and which I judged to be some dirt come in from without. Now, I believe these atoms to be connected with the mineral properties of the water. Round about the outflow these atoms are thicker, where forsooth the waters ought to be the clearest, as I found them to be at Baden. This place is a desert and the lodging very bad; indeed these baths are almost forsaken, the few people who use them preferring to come out in the morning from Pisa, which is only four miles distant, and return in the evening. The chief bath is uncovered, and is the only one which shows any trace of antiquity. It is called the bath of Nero, and the story goes that this Emperor caused water therefrom to be led by an aqueduct to his palace at Pisa.[92] There is another covered bath, filled with the purest water, which is used by the people of the district. It is said to be good for the liver and for the eruptions caused by liver disorders. The same draught is prescribed here as at other baths, and exercise after drinking is commonly taken: or you may take a sweating bath, or use it in other forms. By ascending this hill I got a very fine view, looking over the great plain, the sea, the islands, Leghorn, and Pisa. After coming down we again traversed the plain in which Lucca is situated, and arrived there after a journey of ten miles. XIII RETURN TO LUCCA This morning I passed another stone somewhat larger and looking as if it must have been detached from one much larger. God knows whether it is so. Let it be as He wills. We made the same terms at the inn as at Pisa, four giuli a day for ourselves and three for the servants. But on the 28th, being in a way compelled by the most courteous proposals of Signor Ludovico Pinitesi, I went to occupy a ground-floor apartment in his house. It was very cool, excellently arranged, and contained five chambers, a dining-room and a kitchen, the furniture of all sorts, of the finest and handsomest style, being supplied to me according to Italian custom, which in many ways equals our own and in some surpasses it. These fine large lofty arched ceilings are in truth great ornaments in Italian houses. They give a pleasant and dignified aspect to the entrances, because all the lower storeys are built in this fashion with wide and lofty doorways. In the summer all the gentle-folk of Lucca take their meals in public in these entries in full sight of the passers-by.