Ah! that was a dismal tine! One thing,
however, that disturbed even my present equanimity a little was the
necessity of meeting the custom-house at the Porta del Popolo; but my
past experience warranted me in believing that even these ogres might be
mollified by the magic touch of a scudo; and so it proved. We should
have escaped any examination at all, the officer whispered me, if his
superior had not happened to be present; but, as the case stood, they
took down only one trunk from the top of the vettura, just lifted the
lid, closed it again, and gave us permission to proceed. So we came to
68 Piazza Poli, and found ourselves at once at home, in such a
comfortable, cosey little house, as I did not think existed in Rome.
I ought to say a word about our vetturino, Constantino Bacci, an
excellent and most favorable specimen of his class; for his magnificent
conduct, his liberality, and all the good qualities that ought to be
imperial, S----- called him the Emperor. He took us to good hotels, and
feasted us with the best; he was kind to us all, and especially to little
Rosebud, who used to run by his side, with her small white hand in his
great brown one; he was cheerful in his deportment, and expressed his
good spirits by the smack of his whip, which is the barometer of a
vetturino's inward weather; he drove admirably, and would rumble up to
the door of an albergo, and stop to a hair's-breadth just where it was
most convenient for us to alight; he would hire postilions and horses,
where other vetturini would take nothing better than sluggish oxen, to
help us up the hilly roads, so that sometimes we had a team of seven; he
did all that we could possibly require of him, and was content and more,
with a buon mono of five scudi, in addition to the stipulated price.
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