There was at that time a certain Antonio da Pelago, whose calling it was to act as guide, and to furnish horses.
I had known him for many years, as did all those whose ramblings took them into those hills.

He was in many respects what people call "a character," and seemed to fancy himself to have in some degree proprietary rights over the three celebrated Tuscan monasteries, Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Vernia.

He was well known to the friars at each of these establishments, and indeed to all the sparse population of that country-side.

He was a very good and competent guide and courier, possessed with a very amusingly exaggerated notion of his own importance, and rather bad to turn aside from his own preconceived and predetermined methods of doing everything that had to be done.

George Eliot at once made a study of him.
I am reminded, too, as I write, of the great amusement with which my old and highly-valued friend of many years, Alfred Austin, who long subsequently was making the same excursion with me and both our wives, listened to an oration of the indispensable Antonio.