The cattle were superb—­some immensely large, others delicately small, and all with such long, slim, pointed horns as made one shrink.  Those strong, high-lifted heads carried their weapons like unsheathed scymitars.  Red cords were twined across their foreheads from horn to horn, and red tassels swung beside their faces.  This procession passed in almost entire silence, with only a pattering of hoofs that sounded like heavy rain.

Presently appeared a light wagon in which sat alone a large fleshy woman, who had quite the expression of one making a triumphal entry into the city.  Her black hair was elaborately dressed in braids fastened with gold pins and in short curls on the forehead, and was lightly covered with a black lace veil.  Her dress was a sky-blue silk, with a lace shawl carefully draped over the wide shoulders.  Her hands were loaded with rings and her neck with gold chains, and a large medallion swung over two large brooches.  There was a smile of conscious superiority on her coarsely-handsome face as she glanced over the contadini, who humbly made way for her.  A small, meek, well-dressed man who walked beside the wagon seemed to be the proprietor of its occupant, and to be somewhat oppressed by his good fortune.  There was no room for him in the wagon.  It occurred to me that this might be an avatar of the old woman of Banbury Cross.

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.