Three long streets stretch from east
to west, the central one a very respectable street, clean, well-paved,
and delightfully quiet. You may sit in a window there and hear nothing
the livelong day but the drip of a fountain and the screaming of clouds
of swallows, which are, without exception, the most impudent birds that
can be imagined. Annoyed one day by the persistent "peeping" of a
swallow that had perched in a nook just outside my window, I leaned out
and frightened him away with my handkerchief. He darted down to a
little olive-plantation below, and a minute after up came a score or
two of swallows and began flying round in a circle directly before my
window, screaming like little demons. Now and then one would dart out
of the circle and make a vicious dip toward my face, with the evident
wish to peck my eyes out, so that I was glad to draw back. It reminded
me of the famous circular battery which attacked one of the Confederate
forts during our civil war, and it was quite as well managed.
The _vetturino_ whom we took from the station up to the town on our
arrival told me, when I gave my address, that the Sor Filomena had gone
away from Asisi, and I had better go to the hotel Leone.
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