The crowd thinned away like rain that from a heavy shower falls only in scattered drops, and I was about turning from the window when my eyes fell upon a beautiful bit of color across the way, standing out, as so much Italian color does, against the background of a gray stone wall. It was an odd, slim cone, something over five feet high, made of grass and clover sprinkled through with burning poppies. I was just thinking that this verdure must be fastened to a pole set into the ground when it began to move. The fresh, long grass waved, the poppies glowed like live coals when blown upon, two slim brown feet and ankles appeared under the green fringe, and the dimpled elbow of a slim brown arm peeped out above. Nothing else human was visible as this figure walked away up the street toward the fair. Poor Ruth! She had neither cows, pigs nor chickens, but she came with such riches as she could glean at the roadside from bountiful Nature, clothed and covered from the top of her invisible head down to her well-turned ankles in a garment as fair as fancy could weave.
Later, Count B---- came to take me to the cattle-fair, where we found the upper piazza all a drift of shaded snow at one side with cows and oxen, and at the other a shining chestnut-color with horses and donkeys. We walked among these creatures, my companion warding away from me their long horns and telling me some little items of bovine character which may be known the world over, but which were new to me. Some cattle are women-haters, he said, and in a country where women have so much to do with the cattle that was a great defect. The buyer detected the flaw in this way: he passed his hand slowly down the creature's back from the neck to the tail: then a woman would do the same. If the animal made any difference between the two or looked round at the woman, he would not buy. They try them also when they are eating in the stall. If the animal looks round when it is eating at the person who is approaching, it is ill-natured.
We went then to see the old theatre, where plays used to be performed on great occasions. It was a large circle of stone wall, a miniature of the old amphi-theatre of the Roman Forum, with the sky for a roof. But now a vegetable-garden grows where the spectacle once was seen, and along the walls where the audience sat and gazed deep-hued wallflowers bloom and delicate jasmine-vines hang out their white stars.