And when Lucca was reached there were still fourteen miles, nearly all collar work, between that and the baths, so that the plan more generally preferred was to sleep at Lucca.
The baths (well known to the ancient Romans, of course, as what warm springs throughout Europe were not ?) consisted of three settlements, or groups of houses--as they do still, for I revisited the well-remembered place two or three years ago.

There was the "Ponte," a considerable village gathered round the lower bridge over the Lima, at which travellers from Florence first arrived.

Here were the assembly rooms, the reading room, the principal baths, _and_ the gaming-tables--for in those pleasant wicked days the remote little Lucca baths were little better than Baden subsequently and Monte Carlo now.

Only we never, to the best of my memory, suicided ourselves, though it might happen occasionally, that some innkeeper lost the money which ought to have gone to him, because "the bank" had got hold of it first.
Then secondly there was the "Villa," about a mile higher up the lovely little valley of the Lima, so called because the Duke's villa was situated there.

The Villa had more the pretension--a very little more--of looking something like a little bit of town.