On ordinary days the town was quiet enough. Few people were seen abroad and the noise of a vehicle was an event. But inside the houses [Illustration: BIBBIENA MARKET-PLACE] various trades were plied. The main streets of the place were lined with vaulted cavernous shops, the doors of which were thrown open, and in the deep, shady recesses men were busy at work. As usual in hill cities, blacksmiths’ shops were numerous, and the owners of all seemed well employed. And as one passed along the street--those narrow, stony Italian streets--one’s attention was arrested by the sound of hammering. Presently the hammering ceased, the bellows stirred up a rush of sparks, and for a moment a ruddy light fell on the bending cyclopean figures at work, or perhaps on the bellows themselves, a panting monster couchant on the hearth. From the braziers’ shops sounded the din of the strokes falling on the metal. These shops too were numerous, and their roofs could hardly be seen for the number of large-bellied copper water pots hanging there. The roof too of the shop of smoked wares was almost invisible from rows upon rows of suspended sausages and hams, each tightly confined in a close network of string. There was the weaver’s workshop, from which sounded the regular thud of the beam thrown back on the woof, and there was the wheelwright’s, with its smell of stored timber and its floor strewn with crisp shavings as they were taken off by the plane. The greengrocer’s store was but a poor one as yet; there were lumps of boiled spinage and bunches of young artichokes, no other green-meats, but there were lemons, oranges, nuts and dried figs in plenty. There was the drug store too, with its clean, cool, deserted look. The apothecary and a friend were sitting down to a game of cards one day when we passed, and looked up in surprise as we entered in the hope of coming upon some pots of Savona ware--a desire for which was strong in the new-fledged M.D. Then there was the barber’s shop, with its nimble master, who could be seen operating on a customer, and the small window with panes of glass behind which the watchmaker sat bending over his work. On market-days the town assumed a look of greater liveliness. Two-wheeled country carts came toiling up the hill. They were left on the terrace below or on one side of the market-place, and their inmates stood about in groups with the men of the town who had stopped work for the day. A number of stalls were set up on the market-place and wares of many kinds were displayed. There were stalls of butchers’ meat, loaded with the tiniest of lambkins, a sorry sight; there were stalls with a show of ribbons and laces, all of the cheapest; stalls with bales of homespun; stalls with hats and caps of felt. And on the ground brown and yellow and red earthenware was heaped up or spread about, jars and platters, and pots and pans, in the plainest of forms but most decorative in colour.