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But this was a daily relaxation
with the Brave, who was always stricken deaf when shabby
functionaries in uniform came, as they constantly did come,
plunging out of wooden boxes to look at it--or in other words to
beg--and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that the man might have a
trifle given him, and we resume our journey in peace, was wont to
sit reviling the functionary in broken English: while the
unfortunate man's face was a portrait of mental agony framed in the
coach window, from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to
his disparagement.

There was a postilion, in the course of this day's journey, as wild
and savagely good-looking a vagabond as you would desire to see.
He was a tall, stout-made, dark-complexioned fellow, with a
profusion of shaggy black hair hanging all over his face, and great
black whiskers stretching down his throat. His dress was a torn
suit of rifle green, garnished here and there with red; a steeple-
crowned hat, innocent of nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather
stuck in the band; and a flaming red neckerchief hanging on his
shoulders. He was not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at his
ease, on a sort of low foot-board in front of the postchaise, down
amongst the horses' tails--convenient for having his brains kicked
out, at any moment. To this Brigand, the brave Courier, when we
were at a reasonable trot, happened to suggest the practicability
of going faster. He received the proposal with a perfect yell of
derision; brandished his whip about his head (such a whip! it was
more like a home-made bow); flung up his heels, much higher than
the horses; and disappeared, in a paroxysm, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the axle-tree. I fully expected to see him lying
in the road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-
crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a
sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, 'Ha, ha! what
next! Oh the devil! Faster too! Shoo--hoo--o--o!' (This last
ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being anxious to
reach our immediate destination that night, I ventured, by-and-by,
to repeat the experiment on my own account. It produced exactly
the same effect. Round flew the whip with the same scornful
flourish, up came the heels, down went the steeple-crowned hat, and
presently he reappeared, reposing as before and saying to himself,
'Ha ha! what next! Faster too! Oh the devil! Shoo--hoo--o--o!'



CHAPTER VII--AN ITALIAN DREAM



I had been travelling, for some days; resting very little in the
night, and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken succession of
novelties that had passed before me, came back like half-formed
dreams; and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion
through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. At
intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its
restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite

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