give you."

"If I am not content," cried Count Giovanni, "call me the greatest ass
in the world!"

And I am bound to say that, for all I could see through the mask of
his face, he was satisfied with what I gave him, though it was not
much.

He had told us casually that he was nephew of a nobleman of a certain
rich and ancient family in Venice, who sent him money while in the
army, but this made no great impression on me; and though I knew there
was enough noble poverty in Italy to have given rise to the proverb,
_Un conte che non conta, non conta niente_, yet I confess that it was
with a shock of surprise I heard our guide and servant saluted by
a lounger in Valstagna with "_Sior conte, servitor suo_!" I looked
narrowly at him, but there was no ray of feeling or pride visible in
his pale, languid visage as he responded, "_Buona sera, caro_."

Still, after that revelation we simple plebeians, who had been all day
heaping shawls and guide-books upon Count Giovanni, demanding menial
offices from him, and treating him with good-natured slight, felt
uncomfortable in his presence, and welcomed the appearance of our
carriage with our driver, who, having started drunk from Bassano in
the morning, had kept drunk all day at Valstagna, and who now drove us
back wildly over the road, and almost made us sigh for the security of
mules ambitious of the brinks of precipices.

MINOR TRAVELS.

I.

PISA.

I am afraid that the talk of the modern railway traveller, if he is
honest, must be a great deal of the custodians, the vetturini, and the
facchini, whose agreeable acquaintance constitutes his chief knowledge
of the population among which he journeys. We do not nowadays carry
letters recommending us to citizens of the different places. If we
did, consider the calamity we should be to the be-travelled Italian
communities we now bless! No, we buy our through-tickets, and we put
up at the hotels praised in the hand-book, and are very glad of a
little conversation with any native, however adulterated he be by
contact with the world to which we belong. I do not blush to own that
I love the whole rascal race which ministers to our curiosity and
preys upon us, and I am not ashamed to have spoken so often in this
book of the lowly and rapacious but interesting porters who opened to
me the different gates of that great realm of wonders, Italy. I doubt
if they can be much known to the dwellers in the land, though they
are