eapolitan curses, Ferragut believed for an instant that they
were going to kill one another.... The two climbed into the nearest
vehicle, and immediately the tumult ceased. The empty coaches returned
to occupy their former place in the line, and the deadly rivals renewed
their placid and laughing conversation.

An enormous upright plume was waving on their horses' heads. The
cabman, in order not to be discourteous to his two clients, would
occasionally turn half-way around, giving them explanations.

"Over there," and he pointed with his whip, "is the road of
Piedigrotta. The gentleman ought to see it on a day of fiesta in
September. Few return from it with a firm step. _S. Maria di
Piedigrotta_ enabled Charles III to put the Austrians to flight in
Velletri.... _Aooo!_"

He moved his whip like a fishing rod over the upright plume, increasing
the steed's pace with a professional howl.... And as though his cry
were among the sweetest of melodies, he continued talking, by
association of ideas:

"At the fiesta of _Piedigrotta_, when I was a boy, were given out the
best songs of the year. There was proclaimed the latest fashionable
love song, and long after we had forgotten it foreigners would come
here repeating it as though it was a novelty."

He made a short pause.

"If the lady and gentleman wish," he continued, "I will take them, on
returning, to _Piedigrotta_. Then we'll see the little church of _S.
Vitale_. Many foreign ladies hunt for it in order to put flowers on the
sepulcher of a hunch-back who made verses,--Giacomo Leopardi."

The silence with which his two clients received these explanations made
him abandon his mechanical oratory in order to take a good look at
them. The gentleman was taking the lady's hand and was pressing it,
speaking in a very low tone. The lady was pretending not to listen to
him, looking at the villas and the gardens at the left of the road
sloping down toward the sea.

With noble magnanimity, however, the driver still wished to instruct
his indifferent clients, showing them with the point of his whip the
beauty and wonders of his repertoire.

"That church is _S. Maria del Parto_, sometimes called by others the
_Sannazaro._ _Sannazaro_ was also a noted poet who described the loves
of shepherdesses, and Frederick II of Aragon made him the gift of a
villa with gardens in order that he might write with greater comfort...
Those were other days, sir! His heirs converted it into a chu