ce were quite enough; and that the pontifical visee could be
obtained in Ferrara or Bologna; and entreated them to permit me to go on
to Ferrara, where I would lay my passport before the authorities, and
have the error rectified. I shall never forget the emphasis with which
the younger of the two officials replied, "Non possum." I had often
declined "possum" to my old schoolmaster in former days, little dreaming
that I was to hear the vocable pronounced with such terrible meaning in
a little cell, at day-break, on the banks of the Po. The postilion
cracked his whip,--I saw the _diligence_ move off,--and the sound of its
retreating wheels seemed like a farewell to friends and home. A sad,
desolate feeling weighed upon me as I turned to the faces of the
police-officers and gendarmes in whose power I was left. We all went
back together into the little apartment of the passport office, where I
opened a conversation with them, in order to discover what was to be
done with me,--whether I was to be sent back to Venice, or home to
England, or simply thrown into the Po. I made rapid progress in my
Italian studies that day; and had it been my hap to be arrested a dozen
days on end by the papal authorities, I should by that time have been a
fluent Italian speaker. The result of much questioning and explanation
was, that if I liked to forward a petition to the authorities in
Ferrara, accompanied by my passport, I should be permitted to wait where
I was till an answer could be returned. It was my only alternative; and,
hiring a special messenger, I sent him off with my passport, and a
petition craving permission to enter "the States," addressed to the
Pontifical Legation at Ferrara. Meanwhile, I had a gendarme to take care
of me.

To while away the time, I sallied out, and sauntered along the banks of
the river. It was now full day: and the cheerful light, and the noble
face of the Po,--here a superb stream, equal almost to the Rhine at
Cologne,--rolling on to the Adriatic, chased away my pensiveness. The
river here flows between lofty embankments,--the adjoining lands being
below its level, and reminding one of Holland; and were any
extraordinary inundation to happen among the Alps, and force the
embankments of the Po, the territory around Ferrara, if not also that
city itself, would infallibly be drowned. A few lighters and small
craft, lifting their sails to the morning sun, were floating down the
current; and here and there on t