And Ravenna is a specially cold place.  At Florence, the winter, though short, is often sharp enough; and the climate of the old Tuscan city is considered a somewhat severe one for Italy.  But the district which lies to the north-eastward, on the low coast of the upper part of the stormy Adriatic, is much colder.  There is nothing, neither hill nor forest, between the Friulian Alps and Ravenna, to prevent the north-eastern winds, bringing with them a Siberian temperature, from sweeping the low shelterless plain on which the ancient capital of the Exarchs is situated.

They were so sweeping that plain, and howling fiercely through the deserted streets of the old city, on the November evening in question.

Nevertheless there were several persons loitering around the door of that ancient hostelry, the “Albergo della Spada,” in the Via del Monte, then as now, and for many a generation past, the principal inn of Ravenna.  They were wrapped in huge cloaks, most of them with hoods to them, which gave the wearers a strange sort of monkish appearance.  And they from time to time blew upon their fingers, in the intervals of using their mouths for the purpose of grumbling at the cold.  But they none of them resorted to tramping up and down, or stamping with their feet, or threshing themselves with their arms, or had recourse to movement of any kind to get a little warmth into their bodies, as Englishmen may be seen to do under similar circumstances.  However cold it may be an Italian never does anything of this sort.  It must be supposed, that to him cold is a less detestable evil than muscular exertion of any kind.

There were some half-dozen men standing about the door; and though they were doing nothing, it was not to be supposed that they stood there in the bitter cold for their own amusement.  The fact was, they were waiting for one of the great events of the day at Ravenna,—­the arrival of the diligenza from Bologna.  It was past six o’clock in the evening; and it could not now be long before the expected vehicle would arrive.

It is a distance of some sixty miles from Bologna to Ravenna; the diligence started at five in the morning, and was due at the latter city at five in the evening.  But nobody expected that it would reach its destination at that hour.  It had never done so within the memory of man, even in the fine days of summer, and now, when the roads were rough with ridges of frozen mud!  It was now, however, nearly half-past six—­yes, there went the half-hour clanging from the cracked-voiced old bell in the top of the round brick tower, which stands on one side of the cathedral, and by its likeness to a minaret reminds one of the Byzantine parentage of its builders.

Half-past six!  The loiterers about the inn door remark to each other, that unless “something” has happened old Cecco Zoppo can’t be far off now.