State; and tells him
that if he keeps on the way he is headed he will be getting the
cross of the Legion of Honor pretty soon. They shake hands and
embrace, and the cabman cuts another notch in his mudguard, and
gets back on the seat and drives on. Then if, by any chance, the
victim of the accident still breathes, the gendarme arrests him
for interfering with the traffic. It is a lovely system and sweetly
typical.
Under the general classification of thrilling moments in the night
life of Europe I should like to list a carriage trip through the
outskirts of Naples after dark. In the first place the carriage
driver is an Italian driver - which is a shorter way of saying he
is the worst driver living. His idea of getting service out of a
horse is, first to snatch him to a standstill by yanking on the
bit and then to force the poor brute into a gallop by lashing at
him with a whip having a particularly loud and vixenish cracker
on it; and at every occasion to whoop at the top of his voice.
In the second place the street is as narrow as a narrow alley,
feebly lighted, and has no sidewalks. And the rutty paving stones
which stretch from housefront to housefront are crawling with
people and goats and dogs and children. Finally, to add zest to
the affair,there are lots of loose cows mooning about - for at this
hour the cowherd brings his stock to the doors of his patrons.
In an Italian city the people get their milk from a cow, instead
of from a milkman as with us. The milk is delivered on the hoof,
so to speak.
The grown-ups refuse to make way for you to pass and the swarming
young ones repay you for not killing them by pelting pebbles and
less pleasant things into your face. Beggars in all degrees of
filth and deformity and repulsiveness run alongside the carriage
in imminent danger from the wheels, begging for alms. If you give
them something they curse you for not giving them more, and if you
give them nothing they spit at you for a base dog of a heretic.
But then, what could you naturally expect from a population that
thinks a fried cuttlefish is edible and a beefsteak is not?
Chapter XIV
That Gay Paresis
As you walk along the Rue de la Paix [Footnote: The X being one
of the few silent things in France.] and pay and pay, and keep on
paying, your eye is constantly engaged by two inscriptions that
occur and recur with the utmost frequency. One of these appears
in nearly every shopwindow and over nearly every shopdoor.
