I can only indicate briefly the varied attractions of Pinzolo and its immediate neighbourhood, leaving to each visitor the pleasure of fresh discovery. But on looking back I find that I have left out what ought to have been the most prominent object in my picture. Most English travellers are disposed to agree with Dr. Johnson that the most beautiful landscape in the world would be improved by a good inn in the foreground. It is too late to put Signor Bonapace's in this position, but I will do my best to repair the slight by describing it at once, and with some minuteness.
The house remains up to the present time a good specimen of the country inn of Southern Tyrol. It is kept by well-to-do people, who drive an excellent trade with their own country-folk, and until the last year or two looked with some astonishment on the few pleasure-travellers whom each summer brought them. An arched doorway opens out of the paved street into a sort of barn, whence a steep stone staircase leads up into a dark, low-roofed hall or lobby, crowded with benches and tables. Out of it open two still gloomier inner chambers. In one a faint glimmer of bright copper, a sound of hissing, and a bustling of Marthas, reveal the kitchen; in the other, at the foot of an enormous family bed, leaning over a table, sits the master of the house, one eye intent on accounts, the other keeping a quiet watch over what goes on around. At his order a handmaiden will leave her labours in the kitchen and conduct you up another steep flight of stairs, and into a large dormitory containing five beds, three tables, and two washing-basins, which used to be considered to fulfil every possible requirement for night accommodation. Now, however, several smaller apartments have been furnished for guests, and a cheerful room in the next house, over the grocer's shop, is also put at the service of English prejudice. Meals cooked in the fashion of the country, but very plentiful, are served in a little room with a bed in the corner, which opens out of the lobby.
Both are generally filled of an evening with a crowd of customers of the peasant-farmer class, perfectly well conducted, but too talkative and fond of smoking to be altogether agreeable companions. Yet dark and dingy and crowded though it is, there is romance about this typical Italian mountain inn. Its discomforts are soon forgotten, and it lives in our memories by many cheerful sights and sounds: the splash of the fountain at the corner under the walnut-tree, where the women in their bright-coloured handkerchiefs wash their linen, and call out cheerily to the barefooted little Pietros and Marias playing in the sunshine; the sudden bustle and tinkle of the goats returning from the mountain as they troop off in little companies to their separate homes; the noise of the bowls and the laughter of the players, kept up till there is no longer light to pursue the game: last of all, as if in solemn contrast to the exuberant life of the day, the melancholy voice of the watchman ringing out through the silent night.