id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1 value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000012929100 | on they cannot accomplish seven knots. Turning from the ships to the harbour, I could not help thinking of Sydney Smiths remark on the Reform Club, I prefer your room to your company; for, after all, what a sorry stud it is for such a magnificent stable! It is but a beginning, you will say. True enough, and so is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929101 | everything just now here; but, except the Genoese, the Italians have few real sailors. There are no deep-sea fisheries, and the small craft which creep along close to shore are not the nurseries of seamen. The world, however, has resolved, by a large vote, to be hopeful about Italy; and, of course, she will have a fleet, as she will | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929102 | have all the trade of the Levant, immensely productive mines, and vast regions of cotton. What for no? as Meg Dodds says; but I cant help thinking there are no people in Europe so much alike as the Italians and the Irish; and I ask myself, How is it that every one is so sanguine about the one, and so | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929103 | hopeless about the other? Why do we hear of the capacity and the intelligence of the former, and only of the latter what pertains to their ignorance and their sloth? Oh! unjust generation of men! have not my poor countrymen all the qualities you extol in these same Peninsulars, plus a few others not to be disparaged? THE STRANGER AT | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929104 | THE CROCE DI MALTA. At the Croce di Malta, where we stopped--the Odessa, we heard, was atrociously bad--we met a somewhat depressed countryman, whose familiarity with place and people was indicated by several little traits. He rebuked the waiter for the salad oil, and was speedily supplied with better; he remonstrated about the wine, and a superior cru was served | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929105 | the day following. The book of the arrivals, too, was brought to him each day as he sat down to table, and he grunted out, I remember, in no very complimentary fashion as he read our names, Nobodies. My Garibaldian friend had gone over to Massa, so that I found myself alone with this gentleman on the night of my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929106 | arrival; for, when the company of the _table-dhte_ withdrew, he and I were discovered, as the stage-people say, seated opposite to each other at the fire. It blew hard without; the sea beat loudly on the shingly shore, and even sent some drifts of spray against the windows; while within doors a cheerful wood-fire blazed on the ample hearth, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929107 | the low-ceilinged room did not look a whit the worse that it suggested snugness instead of splendour. I had got my cup of coffee and my cognac on a little table beside me; and while I filled the bowl of my pipe, I bethought me how cheap and come-at-able are often the materials of our comfort, if one had but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929108 | the prudence which ignores all display. My companion, apparently otherwise occupied in thought, sat gazing moodily at the fire, and to all seeming unaware of my presence. Will my smoking annoy you, sir? asked I, as I was ready to begin. No, said he, without looking up. Id like to know where one could go to live nowadays if it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929109 | did. Very true, said I; the practice is almost universal So is child-murder, so is profane swearing, so is wearing a beard, and poisoning by strychnine. I was somewhat struck by his enumeration of modern atrocities, and I said, in a tone intended to invite converse, You are no admirer, then, of what some are fain to call progress? He | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929110 | started, and, turning a fierce sharp glance on me, said, Id rather youd touch me with that hot poker there, sir, than hurl that hateful word at my ears. If theres a thing I hate the most, its what cant--a vile modern slang--calls Progress. Youre just in the spot at this moment to mark one of its high successes. Do | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929111 | you know Spezia? Not in the least; never was here before. Well, sir, I have known it, Ill not stop to count how many years; but I knew it when that spot yonder, where you see that vile tall chimney, with its tail of murky smoke, was a beautiful little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929112 | perceive that red glare--the flame of a smelting furnace--there was an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse stood, on that rocky point, they have got a crane and a windlass. Now, turn to this other side. The road you saw to-day, crossed with four main lines, cut up, almost impassable between mud, rubbish, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929113 | fallen timber, with swampy excavations on one side and brick-fields on the other, led--ay, and not four years ago--along the margin of the sea, with a forest of chestnuts on the other side, two lines of acacias forming a shade along it, so that in the mid-day of an Italian July you might walk it in delicious shadow. In the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929114 | Gulf itself the whole scene was mirrored, and not a headland, nor rock, nor cliff, that was not pictured below. It was, in a word, a little paradise; nor were the people all unworthy of their lovely birthplace. They were a quiet, civil, obliging, simple-minded set--if not inviting strangers to settle amongst them, never rude or repelling to them; equitable | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929115 | in dealings, and strange to all disturbance or outrage. What they are now is no more easy to say than what a rivulet is when a torrent has carried away its banks and swept its bed. Two thousand navvies, the outsweepings of jails and the galleys, have come down to the works; a horde of contractors, sub-contractors, with the several | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929116 | staffs of clerks, inspectors, and suchlike, have settled on the spot, ravaging its beauty, uprooting its repose, vulgarising its simple rusticity, and converting the very gem of the Mediterranean into a dreary swamp--a vast amphitheatre, where liberated felons, robbing contractors, foul miasma, centrifugal pumps, and tertian fevers, fight all day for the mastery. And for what?--for what? To fill the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929117 | pockets of knavish ministers and thieving officials--to make an arsenal that will never be finished, for a fleet that will never be built. My companion, it is needless to say, was no optimist; but the strange point was, that while he was unsparing of his censure on Cavour and the Piedmontese party, he was no apologist for the old state | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929118 | of things in Italy. So far from it, that he launched out freely in attack of Papal bigotry, superstition, and corruption, and freely corroborated our own Premiers assertions, by calling the Popes the worst government in Europe. In fact, he showed very clearly that the smaller states of Italy were well or ill administered in the direct ratio that they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929119 | admitted or rejected Papal interference,--Modena being the worst, and Tuscany the best of them. Though he certainly knew his subject so far as details went--for he not merely knew Italy well in its several provinces, but he understood the characters and tempers of the leading Italians--yet, with all this, I could not help asking him, If he was not satisfied | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929120 | with the old Italy, and yet did not like the new, what he did wish for? I have my theory on that subject, sir, said he; nor am I the less enamoured of it that I never yet met the man I could induce to adopt it. It is no worse than the fate of all discoverers, I suppose, said | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929121 | I; Columbus saw land two whole days before his followers. Columbus was a humbug, sir, and no more discovered America than you did. I was so afraid of a digression here that I stammered out a partial concurrence, and asked for some account of his project for Italy. Id unite her to Greece, sir. These people, with the exception of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929122 | a small circle around Rome, are not Latins--they are Greeks. Id bring them back to the parent stock, who are the only people in Europe with craft and subtlety to rule them. Take my word for it, sir, theyd not cheat the Hellenes as they do the French and the English; and as the only true way to reform a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929123 | nation is to make vice unprofitable, Id unite them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman, the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States? Simply the fact, that the craft by which he outwitted John Bull no longer serves | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929124 | him. The Yankee is too shrewd to be jockeyed by it, and Paddy must use his hands instead of his head. The same would happen with the Italian. Give him a Greek master, and youll see what hell become. But the Greeks, after all, said I, do not present such a splendid example of order and prosperity. They are little | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929125 | better than brigands. And dont you see why? broke he in. Have you ever looked into a gambling-house when the company had no pigeon, and were obliged to play against each other. They have lost all decency--all the semblance of good manners and decorum. Whatever little politeness they had put on to impose upon the outsider was gone, and there | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929126 | they were in all the naked atrocity of their bad natures. It is thus you see the Greeks. You have dropped in upon them unfairly; you have invaded a privacy they had hoped might be respected. Give them a nation to cheat, however; let the pigeon be introduced, and youll not see a better bred and a more courtly people | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929127 | in Europe. That they had great social qualities he proceeded to show from a number of examples. They were, in fact, in the world of long ago what the French are to our own day, and there was no reason to suppose that the race had lost its old characteristics. According to my companions theory, Force had only its brief | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929128 | interval of domination anywhere; the superior intelligence was sure to gain the upper hand at last; and we, in our opposition to this law, were supply retarding an inevitable tendency of nature--protracting the fulfilment of what we could not prevent. I got him back from these speculations to speak of himself, and he told me some experiences which will, perhaps, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929129 | account for the displeasure with which he regards the changed fortunes of Spezia. I shall give his narrative as nearly as I can in his own words, and in a chapter to itself. THE STRANGE MANS SORROW. When I first knew Spezia, it was a very charming spot to pass the summer in. The English had not found it out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929130 | A bottle of Harvey sauce or a copy of Galignani had never been seen here; and the morning meal, which now figures in my bill as Dejeuner complet--two francs. was then called Coffee, and priced twopence. I used to pass my day in a small sail-boat, and in my evenings I played halfpenny whist with the judge and the commander | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929131 | of the forces and a retired envoy, who, out of a polite attention to me as a stranger, agreed to play such high stakes during my sojourn at the Baths. They were excellent people, of unblemished character, and a politeness I have rarely seen equalled. Nobody could sneeze without the whole company rising to wish him a long and prosperous | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929132 | life, or a male heir to his name; and as for turning the trump card without a smile and a bow all round to the party, it was a thing unheard of. I thought if I could only secure a spot to live in in such an Arcadia, it would be charming, but this was a great difficulty. No one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929133 | had any accommodation more than he wanted for himself. The very isolation that gave the place its charm excluded all speculation, and not a house was to be had. In my voyagings, however, around the Gulf, I landed one day at a little inlet, surrounded with high lands, and too small to be called a bay, and there, to my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929134 | intense astonishment, I discovered a small villa. It looked exactly like the houses one sees in a toy-shop, and where you take off the roof to peep in and see how neatly the stairs are made and the rooms divided; but there was a large garden at one side and an orangery at the other, and it all looked the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929135 | neatest and prettiest little thing one ever saw off the boards of a minor theatre. I drew my boat on shore and strolled into the garden, but saw no one, not even a dog. There was a deep well with a draw-bucket, and I filled my gourd with ice-cold water; and then plucking a ripe orange that had just given | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929136 | me a bob in the eye, I sat down to eat it. While I was engaged, I heard a wicket open and shut, and saw an old man, very shabbily dressed, and with a mushroom straw hat, coming towards me. Before I could make excuses for my intrusion, he had welcomed me to Pertusola--The Nook, in English--and invited me to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929137 | step in and have a glass of wine. I took him for the steward or fattore, and acceded, not sorry to ask some questions about the villa and its owner. He showed me over the house, explaining with much pride how a certain kitchen-range came from England, though nobody ever knew the use of it, but it was all very | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929138 | comfortable. The silk-worms and dried figs and salt-fish occupied more space, and contributed more odour, perhaps, than a correct taste would have approved of. Yet there were capabilities--great capabilities; and so, before I left, I took it from the old gentleman in the rusty costume, who turned out to be the proprietor, a marquis, the commendatore of I dont know | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929139 | what order, and various other dignities beside, all recited and set forth in the lease. I suppose I have something of Robinson Crusoe in my nature, for I loved the isolation of this spot immensely. It wasnt an island, but it was all but an island. Towards the land, two jutting promontories of rock denied access to anything not a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929140 | goat; the sea in front; an impenetrable pine wood to the rear: and there I lived so happily, so snugly, that even now, when I want a pleasant theme to doze over beside my wood-fire of an evening, I just call up Pertusola, and ramble once again through its olive groves, or watch the sunset tints as they glow over | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929141 | the Carara mountains. I smartened the place up wonderfully, within doors and without. I got flowers, roots, and annuals, and slips of geraniums, and made the little plateau under my drawing-room window a blaze of tulips and ranunculuses, so that the Queen--she was at Spezia for the bathing--came once to see my garden, as one of the show spots of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929142 | the place. Her Majesty was as gracious as only royalty knows how to be, and so were all her suite in their several ways; but there was one short, fat, pale-faced man, with enormous spectacles, who, if less polite than the rest, was ten times as inquisitive. He asked about the soil, and the drainage, the water and its quality--was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929143 | it a spring--did it ever fail--and when, and how? Then as to the bay itself, was it sheltered, and from what winds? What the anchorage was like--mud--and why mud? And when I said there was always a breeze even in summer, he eagerly pushed me to explain, why? and I did explain that there was a cleft or gully between | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929144 | the hills, which acted as a sort of conductor to the wind; and on this he went back to verify my statement, and spent some time poking about, examining everything, and stationing himself here and there on points of rock, to experience the currents of air. You are right, said he, as he got into his boat, quite right; there | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929145 | is a glorious draught here for a smelting-furnace. I thought it odd praise at the time, but before six months I received notice to quit. Pertusola had been sold to a lead company, one of the directors having strongly recommended the site as an admirable harbour, with good water, and a perpetual draught of wind, equal to a blast-furnace. Looking | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929146 | at the dress-coat in which you once captivated dinner-parties, on a costeimonger--seeing the strong-boned hunter that has carried you over post and rail, in a cab,--are sore trials; but nothing, according to my companions description, to the desecration of your house and home by its conversion into a factory. Such an air of the Inferno, too, pervades the smelting-house, with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929147 | its lurid glow, its roar, its flash, and its furious heat, that I could readily forgive him the passionate warmth with which he described it. They had begun that chimney, sir, cried he, before I got out of the house. I had to cross on a plank over a pit before my door, where they were riddling the ore. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929148 | morning I left, I covered my eyes, not to see the barbaric glee with which they destroyed all around, and I left the place for ever. I crossed over the Gulf, and I took that house you can see on the rocky point called Marola. It had no water; there was no depth to anchor in; and not a breath | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929149 | of air could come at it except in stillness. No more terrors of smelting-house here, thought I. Well, sir, I must be brief; the whole is too painful to dwell on. I hadnt been eight months there when a little steamer ran in one morning, and four persons in plain clothes landed from her, and pottered about the shore--I thought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929150 | looking for anemones. At last they strolled up to my house, and asked permission to have a look at the Gulf from my terrace. I acceded, and in they came. They were all strangers but one, and who do you think he was? The creature with the large spectacles! My blood ran cold when I saw him. You used to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929151 | live yonder, if I mistake not, said he to me, coolly. Yes, and I might have been living there still, replied I, if it had not been for the prying intrusion of a stranger, to whom I was weak enough to be polite. He never noticed my taunt in the least, but, calmly opening the window, passed out upon the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929152 | terrace. The others speedily gathered around him, and I saw that he knew the whole place as if it had been his bedroom; for not only did he describe the exact measurements between various points, but the depth of water, the character of the bottom, the currents, and the prevailing winds. He went on, besides, to show how, by running | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929153 | out a pier here, and a breakwater there--by filling up this, and deepening that--safe anchorage could be secured in all weathers; while the headlands could be easily fortified, and at a moderate cost, I quote himself, of say twenty two or three millions of francs, while a fort erected on the island there would command the whole entrance. And who, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929154 | in the name of all Utopia, wants to force it? cried I; for, as they talked so openly, I thought I might interpose as frankly. He never seemed to resent my remark as obtrusive, but said quietly, Who knows? the French perhaps--perhaps your own people one of these days. Id like to have said, but I didnt, We could walk | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929155 | in and walk out here, with our iron-clads, as coolly as a man goes out in the rain with a mackintosh. They remained fully an hour, talking as freely as if I was born deaf and dumb. At last they arose to leave, and the owl-faced man--he looked exactly like an owl--said, with a little grin, Were going to disturb | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929156 | you again. How so? cried I; you cant smelt lead here. No, but were going to make an arsenal. Where you stand now will be a receiving-dock, and that garden of yours a patent slip. Youll have to clear out before the New Year. Who is he? who is that with the spectacles? asked I of one of the servants, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929157 | who waited outside with cloaks and umbrellas. Thats the Conte di Cavour, said the fellow, haughtily; and thus was the whole murder out at once. They turned me out, sir, in two months, and I never ventured to take a lease of a place till he died. After that event, I purchased a little spot on the island of Tino | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929158 | yonder, and built myself a cottage. They could neither smelt metal nor build a ship there, and I hugged myself at the thought of safety. But, would you believe it? last week--only last week--his successor, in rummaging over Cavours papers in the Foreign Office, comes upon a packet labelled Spezia, and discovers a memorandum in these words, The English Admiral, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929159 | at dinner to-day, laughed at the idea of defending the mouth of the Gulf from the island. He said the entrance should be two-thirds closed by a breakwater, and a strong fort _ fleur deau_ built on Tino. I have thought of it all night; he is perfectly right, and Ill do it; and here, sir, said my companion, drawing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929160 | a paper from his pocket, is a sommation from the minister to surrender my holding on Tino, receiving a due compensation for the same, and once more betake myself, heaven knows where; for, though the great Count Cavour is dead and gone, his grand intentions are turning up every day, out of drawers and pigeonholes, and I shrewdly suspect that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929161 | neither Pio Nono nor myself will live to see the last of them. ITALIAN LAW AND JUSTICE. My Garibaldian friend has returned, but only to bid me good-bye and be off again. The Government, it would seem, are rather uneasy as to the movements of the Beds, and quietly intimated to my friend that they were sure he had something | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929162 | particular to do--some urgent private affairs--at Geneva; and, like the well-bred dog in the story, he does not wait for any further suggestions, but goes at once. He revenged himself, however, all the time at breakfast, by talking very truculently before the waiters of what would happen when Garibaldi took the field again, and how miserably small Messrs Batazzi & | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929163 | Co. would look under the circumstances. Indeed, as he warmed with his subject, he went the length of declaring that, without a very ample apology for the events of Aspromonte, he did not believe Garibaldi would consent to take Venice, or drive the French out of Rome. With a spirit of tantalising he prolonged this same breakfast for upwards of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929164 | two hours, during which the officer of the gendarmerie came and went, and came again, very eager to see him depart, but evidently with instructions neither to molest nor interfere with him. Just look at that beggar, cried the Garibaldian; if he has come in here once during the last hour, he has come a dozen times, and all on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929165 | my account! And I mean to smoke three cavours over my anisetto before I leave. Waiter, tell the vetturino hell have plenty of time to throw a feed to his cattle before I start. You know, added he, if I was disposed to be troublesome, Id not budge: Id write up to Turin to the Legation and claim British protection; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929166 | and Id have these fellows on the hip, for they stupidly gave me a reason for my expulsion. They said I was conspiring. Now I could say, Prove it; and if we only went to law, it would take ten or twelve years to decide it. My companion now went on to show that, by a small expenditure of money | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929167 | and a very ordinary exercise of ingenuity, a lawsuit need never end in Italy. First of all, you could ask the opposite party, Who was his advocate? and on his naming him, you could immediately set to work to show that this man was a creature so vile and degraded, no man with the commonest pretension to honesty would dream | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929168 | of employing him. The history of his father could be adduced, and any private little anecdotes of his mother would find a favourable opportunity for mention. Though a mere skirmish, if judiciously managed, this will occupy a week or two, and at the same time serve to indicate that you mean to show fight; for by this time the Legales | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929169 | blood will be up, and he is certain to make reprisals on _your_ man, so that for a month or so you and the other principal are in the position of men who, having come out to fight a duel, are first gratified with the spectacle of a row between the seconds. However, at last it is arranged that the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929170 | lawyers are worthy of each other; and the next step is to demand the names of all the witnesses. This opens a campaign of unlimited duration, for, as nobody is rash enough to trust himself or his cause to real and _bon-fide_ testimony, witnesses are usually selected amongst the most astute and ready-witted persons of your acquaintance. Oh, cried I, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929171 | this is a little too strong, isnt it? Let me give you an instance, said he, good-humouredly, and not in the least disposed to be displeased with my expression of distrust. Some time back an American gentleman took up his abode for some weeks on the Chiaja at Naples, and in the same house there lived an Italian, with whom, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929172 | from frequently meeting on the stairs and corridors, a sort of hat-touching acquaintance had grown up. At length one day, as the American was passing hastily out, the Italian accosted him with a courteous bow and smile, and said, When will it be your perfect convenience, signor, to repay me that little loan of two hundred ducats it was my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929173 | happy privilege to have lent you last month? The American, astounded as he was, had yet patience to inquire whether he had not mistaken him for another. The other smiled somewhat reproachfully, as he said, I trust, signor, you are not disposed to ignore the obligation. You are the gentleman who lives, I believe, on the second floor left? Very | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929174 | true; I do live there, and I owe you nothing. I never borrowed a carlino from you--I never spoke to you before; and if you ever take the liberty to speak to me again, Ill knock you down. The Italian smiled again, not so blandly, perhaps, but as significantly, and saying, We shall see, bowed and retired. The American thought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929175 | little more of the matter till, going to the Prefecture to obtain his vis for Borne, he discovered that his passport had been stopped, and a detainer put upon him for this debt. He hastened at once to his Minister, who referred him to the law-adviser of the Legation for counsel. The man of law looked grave; he neither heeded | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929176 | the angry denunciations of the enraged Yankee, nor his reiterated assurances that the whole was an infamous fraud. He simply said, The case is difficult, but I will do my best. After the lapse of about a week, a message came from the Prefect to say that the strangers passport was at his service whenever he desired to have it. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929177 | I knew it would be so! cried the American, as he came suddenly upon his lawyer in the street. I was certain that you were only exaggerating the difficulty of a matter that must have been so simple; for, as I never owed the money, there was no reason why I should pay it. It was a case for some | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929178 | address, notwithstanding, said the other, shaking his head. Address! fiddle-stick! It was a plain matter of fact, and needed neither skill nor cunning. You of course showed that this fellow was a stranger to me--that we had never interchanged a word till the day he made this rascally demand? I did nothing of the kind, sir. If I had put | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929179 | in so contemptible a plea, you would have lost your cause. What I did was this: I asked what testimony he could adduce as to the original loan, and he gave me the name of one witness, a certain Count well known in this city, who was at breakfast with him when you called to borrow this money, and who | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929180 | saw the pieces counted out and placed in your hand. You denounced this fellow as a perjurer? Far from it, sir. I respect the testimony of a man of station and family, and I would not insult the feelings of the Count by daring to impugn it; but as the plaintiff had called only one witness to the loan, I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929181 | produced two just as respectable, just as distinguished, who saw you repay the debt! You are now free; and remember, sir, that wherever your wanderings lead you, never cease to remember that, whatever be our demerits at Naples, at least we can say with pride, The laws are administered with equal justice to all men! The entrance of the gendarme | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929182 | at this moment cut short the question I was about to ask, whether I was to accept this story as a fact or as a parable. Here he comes again. Only look at the misery in the fellows face! and you see he has his orders evidently enough; and he dare not hurry me. I think Ill have a bath | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929183 | before I start. It is scarcely fair, after all, said I. I suppose he wants to get back to his one oclock dinner. I could no more feel for a gendarme than I could compassionate a scorpion. Take the best-natured fellow in Europe--the most generous, the most trustful, the most unsuspecting--make a brigadier of Gendarmerie of him for three months, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929184 | and hell come out scarcely a shade brighter than the veriest rascal he has handcuffed! Do you know what our friend yonder is at now? No. He appears to be trying to take a stain out of one of his yellow gauntlets. No such thing. He is noting down your features--taking a written portrait of you, as the man who | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929185 | sat at breakfast with me on a certain morning of a certain month. Take my word for it, some day or other when you purchase a hat too tall in the crown, or you are seen to wear your whiskers a trifle too long or bushy, an intimation will reach you at your hotel, that the Prefect would like to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929186 | talk with you; the end of which will be the question, Whether there is not a friend you are most anxious to meet in Switzerland, or if you have not an uncle impatient to see you at Trieste? And yet, added he, after a pause, the Piedmontese are models of liberality and legality in comparison with the officials in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929187 | south. In Sicily, for instance, the laws are more corruptly administered than in Turkey. Ill tell you a case, which was, however, more absurd than anything else. An English official, well known at Messina, and on the most intimate terms with the Prefect, came back from a short shooting-excursion he had made into the interior, half frantic with the insolence | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929188 | of the servants at a certain inn. The proprietor was absent, and the waiter and the cook--not caring, perhaps, to be disturbed for a single traveller--had first refused flatly to admit him; and afterwards, when he had obtained entrance, treated him to the worst of food, intimating at the same time it was better than he was used to, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929189 | plainly giving him to understand that on the very slightest provocation they were prepared to give him a sound thrashing. Boiling over with passion, he got back to Messina, and hastened to recount his misfortunes to his friend in power. Where did it happen? asked the hard-worked Prefect, with folly enough on his hands without having to deal with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929190 | sorrows of Great Britons. At Spalla deMonte. When? On Wednesday last, the 23d. What do you want me to do with them? To punish them, of course. How--in what way? How do I know? Send them to jail. For how long? A month if you can--a fortnight at least. What are the names? asked the Prefect, who all this time | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929191 | continued to write, filling up certain blanks in some printed formula before him. How should I know their names? I can only say that one was the cook, the other the waiter. There! said the Prefect, tossing two sheets of printed and written-over paper towards him--there! tell the landlord to fill in the fellows names and surnames, and send that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929192 | document to the Podesta. They shall have four weeks, and with hard labour. The Englishman went his way rejoicing. He despatched the missive, and felt his injuries were avenged. Two days after, however, a friend dropped in, and in the course of conversation mentioned that he had just come from Spalla de Monte, where he had dined so well and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929193 | met such an intelligent waiter; which, I own, said he, surprised me, for I had heard of their having insulted some traveller last week very grossly. The Englishman hurried off to the Prefecture. We are outraged, insulted, laughed at! cried he: those fellows you ordered to prison are at large. They mock your authority and despise it. A mounted messenger | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929194 | was sent off at speed to bring up the landlord to Messina, and he appeared the next morning, pale with fear and trembling. He owned that the Prefects order had duly reached him, that he had understood it thoroughly; but, Eccellenza, said he, crying, it was the shooting season; people were dropping in every day. Where was I to find | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929195 | a cook or a waiter? I must have closed the house if I parted with them; so, not to throw contempt on your worships order, I sent two of the stablemen to jail in their place, and a deal of good it will do them. While I was laughing heartily at this story, my companion turned towards the gendarme and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929196 | said, Have you made a note of his teeth? you see they are tolerably regular, but one slightly overlaps the other in front. Signor Gnrale, said the other, reddening, Ill make a note of _your_ tongue, which will do quite as well. Bravo! said the Garibaldian; better said than I could have given you credit for. Ill not keep you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929197 | any longer from your dinner. Will you bear me company, asked he of me, as far as Chiavari? Its a fine day, and we shall have a pleasant drive. I agreed, and we started. The road was interesting, the post-horses which we took at Borghetto went well, and the cigars were good, and somehow we said very little to each | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929198 | other as we went. This is the real way to travel, said my companion; a man to smoke with and no bother of talking; theres Chiavari in the hollow. I nodded, and never spoke. Are you inclined to come on to Genoa? No. And soon after we parted--whether ever to meet again or not is not so easy to say, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929199 | nor of very much consequence to speculate on. THE ORGAN NUISANCE AND ITS REMEDY. There is scarcely any better measure of the amount of comfort a man enjoys than in the sort of things of which he makes grievances. When the princess in the Eastern story passed a restless night on account of the rumpled rose-leaf she lay on, the | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.