My long-cherished judgment was confirmed.

I always did think those frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had read so much about in poetry were a glaring fraud.
We enjoyed our jaunt.

It was an exhilarating relief from tiresome sight-seeing.
We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing echo the guide talked so much about.

We were growing accustomed to encomiums on wonders that too often proved no wonders at all.

And so we were most happily disappointed to find in the sequel that the guide had even failed to rise to the magnitude of his subject.
We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo Simonetti--a massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged Italians.
A good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the second floor which looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall buildings.