There was to be a horse-race, a _tombola_, or open lottery, an illumination, display of fire-works, high mass, and, more than all, a public procession, in which the sacred image of San Benedetto was to be carried from the convent to the town.

Such a bill of fare was irresistible, even had there not been added to it the desire to escape from the close muggy climate of Rome into the fresh mountain-air,--a desire whose intensity nothing but a long residence here can enable one to appreciate.
Subiaco is some forty odd miles from Rome, and amongst the petty towns of the Papal States is a place of some small importance.

The means, however, of communication with the metropolis are of the scantiest.

Two or three times a week a sort of Italian _eil-wagen_, a funereal and tumble-down, flea-ridden coach, with windows boarded up so high that, when seated, you cannot see out of them, and closed hermetically, after Italian fashion, shambles along at jog-trot pace between the two towns, and takes a livelong day, from early morning to late at night, to perform the journey.

Other public mode of transit there is none; and therefore, not having patience for the diligence, I had to travel in a private conveyance, and if there had been any one else going from the fair to Rome, which there was not, they must perforce have done the same.