So we left the hermitage, left Fozza, and started down the mountain on foot, for no one may ride down those steeps.  Long before we reached the bottom, we had learned to loathe mountains and to long for dead levels during the rest of life.  Yet the descent was picturesque, and in some things even more interesting than the ascent had been.  We met more people:  now melancholy shepherds with their flocks; now swine-herds and swine-herdesses with herds of wild black pigs of the Italian breed; now men driving asses that brayed and woke long, loud, and most musical echoes in the hills; now whole peasant families driving cows, horses, and mules to the plains below.  On the way down, fragments of autobiography began, with the opportunities of conversation, to come from the Count Giovanni, and we learned that he was a private soldier at home on that permesso which the Austrian Government frequently gives its less able-bodied men in times of peace.  He had been at home some years, and did not expect to be again called into the service.  He liked much better to be in charge of the cave at Oliero than to carry the musket, though he confessed that he liked to see the world, and that soldiering brought one acquainted with many places.  He had not many ideas, and the philosophy of his life chiefly regarded deportment toward strangers who visited the cave.  He held it an error in most custodians to show discontent when travellers gave them little; and he said that if he received never so much, he believed it wise not to betray exultation.  “Always be contented, and nothing more,” said Count Giovanni.

“It is what you people always promise beforehand,” I said, “when you bargain with strangers, to do them a certain service for what they please; but afterward they must pay what you please or have trouble.  I know you will not be content with what I give you.”

“If I am not content,” cried Count Giovanni, “call me the greatest ass in the world!”

And I am bound to say that, for all I could see through the mask of his face, he was satisfied with what I gave him, though it was not much.

He had told us casually that he was nephew of a nobleman of a certain rich and ancient family in Venice, who sent him money while in the army, but this made no great impression on me; and though I knew there was enough noble poverty in Italy to have given rise to the proverb, Un conte che non conta, non conta niente, yet I confess that it was with a shock of surprise I heard our guide and servant saluted by a lounger in Valstagna with “Sior conte, servitor suo!” I looked narrowly at him, but there was no ray of feeling or pride visible in his pale, languid visage as he responded, “Buona sera, caro.”

Still, after that revelation we simple plebeians, who had been all day heaping shawls and guide-books upon Count Giovanni, demanding menial offices from him, and treating him with good-natured slight, felt uncomfortable in his presence, and welcomed the appearance of our carriage with our driver, who, having started drunk from Bassano in the morning, had kept drunk all day at Valstagna, and who now drove us back wildly over the road, and almost made us sigh for the security of mules ambitious of the brinks of precipices.