ologna. At the station we found a crowd of people
waiting and hoping, but there was a sickly cast of doubt in some
faces, and the labeled employes of the railway wore looks of ominous
importance. Of course the crowd did not lose its temper. It sought
information of the officials running to and fro with telegrams, in
a spirit of national sweetness, and consoled itself with saying, as
Italy has said under all circumstances of difficulty for centuries:
_Ci vuol pazienza_! At last a blank silence fell upon it, as the
_Capo-Stazione_ advanced toward a well-dressed man in the crowd, and
spoke to him quietly. The well-dressed man lifted his forefinger and
waved it back and forth before his face:--

_The Well-dressed Man_.--Dunque, non si parte piu? (No departures,
then?)

The _Capo-Stazione_ (waving _his_ forefinger in like manner.)--Non si
parte piu. (Like a mournful echo.)

We knew quite as well from this pantomime of negation as from the
dialogue our sad fate, and submitted to it. Some adventurous spirit
demanded whether any trains would go on the morrow. The Capo-Stazione,
with an air of one who would not presume to fathom the designs of
Providence, responded: "Who knows? To-day, certainly not. To-morrow,
perhaps. But"--and vanished.

It may give an idea of the Italian way of doing things to say that, as
we understood, this break in the line was only a few miles in extent,
that trains could have approached both to and from Bologna, and that
a little enterprise on the part of the company could have passed
travellers from one side to the other with very small trouble or
delay. But the railway company was as much daunted by the inundation
as a peasant going to market, and for two months after the accident
no trains carried passengers from one city to the other. No doubt,
however, the line was under process of very solid repair meanwhile.

For the present the only means of getting to Bologna was by carriage
on the old highway, and accordingly we took passage thither in the
omnibus of the Stella d'Oro.

There was little to interest us in the country over which we rode. It
is perfectly flat, and I suppose the reader knows what quantities
of hemp and flax are raised there. The land seems poorer than in
Lombardy, and the farm-houses and peasants' cottages are small and
mean, though the peasants themselves, when we met them, looked well
fed, and were certainly well clad. The landscape lay soaking in a
dreary drizzle the who