wish; a new occasion is given to them.

As long as I had only met troops, either marching or camping on the road,
all went well, but I soon found myself mixed with an interminable line of
cars and the like, forming the military and the civil train of the moving
army. Then it was that it needed as much patience to keep from jumping
out of one's carriage and from chastising the carrettieri, as they would
persist in not making room for one, and being as dumb to one's entreaties
as a stone. When you had finished with one you had to deal with another,
and you find them all as obstinate and as egotistical as they are from
one end of the world to the other, whether it be on the Casalmaggiore
road or in High Holborn. From time to time things seemed to proceed all
right, and you thought yourself free from further trouble, but you soon
found out your mistake, as an enormous ammunition car went smack into
your path, as one wheel got entangled with another, and as imperturbable
Signor Carrettiere evidently took delight at a fresh opportunity for
stoppage, inaction, indolence, and sleep. I soon came to the conclusion
that Italy would not be free when the Austrians had been driven away, for
that another and a more formidable foe--an enemy to society and comfort,
to men and horses, to mankind in general would have still to be beaten,
expelled, annihilated, in the shape of the carrettiere. If you employ
him, he robs you fifty times over; if you want him to drive quickly, he
is sure to keep the animal from going at all; if, worse than all, you
never think of him, or have just been plundered by him, he will not move
an inch to oblige you. Surely the cholera is not the only pestilence a
country may be visited with; and, should Cialdini ever go to Vienna, he
might revenge Novara and the Spielberg by taking with him the carrettieri
of the whole army.

At last Casalmaggiore hove in sight, and, when good fortune and the
carmen permitted, I reached it. It was time! No iron-plated Jacob could
ever have resisted another two miles' journey in such company. At
Casalmaggiore I branched off. There were, happily, two roads, and not the
slightest reason or smallest argument were needed to make me choose that
which my cauchemar had not chosen. They were passing the river at
Casalmaggiore. I went, of course, for the same purpose, somewhere else.
Any place was good enough--so I thought, at least, then. New adventures,
new miseries awaited me--some carre