Left Lojano in a fog, dense and yellow, which concealed all objects ten yards off,--hearing, not seeing, the approach of travellers and waggons, and D---- hailing them for our safety and theirs. Fanny was frightened and vicious; the road melancholy, as oxen and pedestrians, and now and then an English carriage, issued from the mist close at our side, and were swallowed in it the next moment. It was not till we had descended some miles that the fog diminished, and then, after exciting many delusive hopes, showing through it the sun like a paler moon, yielding between its discoloured waves, peeps into the valley, and again floating like smoke before our faces, we fairly left it behind, issuing into blue sky and sunshine, knowing their value from privation of them. The horses knew the pilgrims' house, but Grizzle made a violent effort to enter the kitchen instead of the stable. Our amiable hostess had chosen her most pleasant apartment, and exerted all her French talent in cookery in the dishes she had noticed to please us before.
A moonlight night at Bologna, such as this, is impressive in its beauty, with the light streaming down its monastic streets, and the deep shadow of its pillared arcades. Miss Adelaide Kemble, who is also lodged at La Pace with her father, sang in her apartments till a crowd, collected beneath her windows, silenced her with its bravas. The Italians will not believe her to be English, and her appearance justifies their opinion, as she has the dark eyes of their country, with features in the style of those of Mrs. Siddons.
To Modena: a burning day. Arrived there and my dress changed, I requested the landlady's pretty daughter to be my guide, as it was advisable to strive to obtain some news of our baggage, so long missing, that we begin to be resigned to its loss and to travelling with little beside the linen our horses carry. Having discovered, with some difficulty, the spedizioniere, who is the correspondent of our Commissionnaire de Roulage, I found that our trunks, having followed ourselves across the broken Simplon on mules' backs, have now been stopped by torrents likely to impede our passage also. Modena is a miniature of a fine city, with a handsome ducal palace and pretty gardens, an Accademmia delle Belle Arti, and other public buildings. The palace is large and handsome; the favourite apartments of the duchess, who is very pious, communicating with the convent, and opening on a private corridor, by which she can reach the adjacent church unobserved. The tribune she occupies is so arranged as almost to conceal her presence, glazed and heavily barred like a convent grate. The duke's theatre (for he is extremely fond of theatricals) joins another part of the Palazzo, and his splendid stables are opposite and on the garden side. My guide said it was one of the sights of Modena, and as she insisted on entering, and the sentinel made room to let us pass, in we went. It is a fine building, with arched and groined roof, the horses ranged down either side, all of the duke's own breed, and some of them superb animals. The roan charger of the last duke stands stuffed and under a glass case at the extremity. There stood near us a personage, a head groom I imagine, who, I am sure, will preserve for a day or two a high opinion of my sagacity.