I Agreed To Pay Him Sixty Francs For
My Place In The Coach, Supper And Bed.
When this stipulation for supper and
bed is included in the price fixed for your place with the vetturino, you
are said to be spesato, and then you have nothing extra to pay for but
your breakfast.
There were two other travellers in the vettura, both
Frenchmen; the one about forty years of age was a Captain of cavalry en
retraite, married to a Hungarian lady and settled at Florence, to which
place he was returning; the other, a young man of very agreeable manners,
settled likewise at Florence, as chief of a manufactory there, returning
from Lyons, his native city, whither he had been to see his relations. I
never in my life met with two characters so diametrically opposite. The
Captain was quite a bourru in his manners, yet he had a sort of dry,
sarcastic, satirical humour that was very diverting to those who escaped
his lash. Whether he really felt the sentiments he professed, or whether he
assumed them for the purpose of chiming in with the times, I cannot say,
but he said he rejoiced at the fall of Napoleon. My other companion,
however, expressed great regret as his downfall, not so much from a regard
for the person of Napoleon, as for the concomitant degradation and conquest
of his country, and he spoke of the affairs of France with a great deal of
feeling and patriotism.
The Captain seemed to have little or no feeling for anybody but himself;
indeed, he laughed at all sentiment and said he did not believe in virtue
or disinterestedness.
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