the judge gave an order
for the immediate and unconditional delivery of the plate; but when I
went to get them at the tribunal, he said it was lucky for me that I
came when I did, as the landlady had come in the afternoon and applied
for an order against me to pay another month's rent (always paid in
advance), and that if she had come first he should have been obliged
to give it to her. I explained that I had been driven out of the
apartment by another occupant; but that, he said, made no difference,
the first applicant for justice would alone have been heard.

Not long after, a similar case called for my more or less official
recognition. My colleague the consul at Florence had come for a visit
to Rome, and had taken a cab to make the rounds of the sights, and,
making his visit to the church of Ara Coeli, he of course left the cab
at the foot of the stairs. He found little which interested him in the
church, and, returning sooner than the cabman expected, he found no
cab there. In the course of the day he went to the police court and
asked for a punishment for the cabman for having deserted him on
his round. The cabman was summoned and fined accordingly; but the
magistrate remarked to my friend when he came to give evidence that
it was fortunate for him that he complained first, for the cabman had
come later in the day and asked for his fare for the night which he
had passed at the foot of the stairs waiting for the return of the
_forestiero_; and he added that if the cabman had come first, my
friend would have been obliged to pay the claim. It was simple and
expeditious, first come being first served, but hardly good civil
administration.

At the time of the expedition of Garibaldi which ended at Aspromonte,
the excitement in the city was intense, and the panic on the part of
the ecclesiastical population so great that they mainly took refuge in
the convents and villages of the mountain country. I had occasion to
see the Pope at that time, and found him in profound despondency,
evidently persuaded that Garibaldi would come to Rome. He said to me
that he was convinced that the great day of tribulation prophesied for
the church had come, and it would have its fifty years of oppression,
after which it would arise again more glorious than ever; but there
was no question that in his mind the French garrison was not for the
moment an efficient protection. The Italian party in the city was very
small, but active, and in th