Note 145 — Chapter XX · THE IDYLLISTS.

One bright morning in the first week of June I went out into the fields at Borca below Macugnaga, which were then full of brilliant and sweet flowers. There I met an old woman, with whom I talked about her life in what seemed to me a terrestrial Paradise. She threw her arms and eyes to heaven, and looking round her, cried, "Che brutto paese!"—"Ah, what an ugly country to live in!" Compare Browning's Up at a Villa, Down in the City.