ing 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 carrettiere, or other, guessing that I was
no friend of his, nor of the whole set of them, had thrown the jattatura
on me.

I alighted at the Colombina, after four hours' ride, to give the
horses time to rest a little. The Albergo della Colombina was a great
disa