Every now and then a string of some half-dozen peasant-carts, laden with wine-barrels or wood faggots, comes jingling by.

The carts so-called, rather by courtesy than right, consist of three rough planks and two high ricketty wheels.

The broken-kneed horses sway to and fro beneath their unwieldy load, and the drivers, clad in their heavy sheepskin jackets, crouch sleepily beneath the clumsy, hide-bound framework, placed so as to shelter them from the chill Tramontana blasts.

A solitary cart is rare, for the neighbourhood of Rome is not the safest of places, and those small piles of stone, with the wooden cross surmounting them, bear witness to the fact that a murder took place not long ago on the very spot you are passing now.

Then, perhaps, you come across a drove of wild, shaggy buffaloes, or a travelling carriage rattling and jilting along, or a stray priest or so, trudging homewards from some outlying chapel.