in ----, where, indeed, no stranger can walk twenty rods from his
hotel without losing himself; that their guide was an ass, or their
courier a rogue. They listened to him politely, but they never
pardoned him in the least; and neither will I forgive the Consul at
Genoa. I had no earthly consular business with him, but a private
favor to ask. It was Sunday, and I could not reasonably expect to find
him at his office, or any body to tell me where he lived; but I have
seldom had so keen a sense of personal wrong and national neglect as
in my search for that Consul's house.

In Italy there is no species of fact with which any human being you
meet will not pretend to have perfect acquaintance, and, of course,
the driver whose fiacre we took professed himself a complete guide to
the Consul's whereabouts, and took us successively to the residences
of the consuls of all the South American republics. It occurred to
me that it might be well to inquire of these officials where their
colleague was to be found; but it is true that not one consul of them
was at home! Their doors were opened by vacant old women, in whom
a vague intelligence feebly guttered, like the wick of an expiring
candle, and who, after feigning to throw floods of light on the
object of my search, successively flickered out, and left me in total
darkness.

Till that day, I never knew of what lofty flights stairs were capable.
As out-of-doors, in Genoa, it is either all up or down hill, so
in-doors it is either all up or down stairs. Ascending and descending,
in one palace after another, those infinite marble steps, it became
a question not solved to this hour, whether it was worse to ascend or
descend,--each ordeal in its turn seemed so much more terrible than
the other.

At last I resolved to come to an understanding with the driver, and
I spent what little breath I had left--it was dry and hot as the
simoom--in blowing up that infamous man. "You are a great driver," I
said, "not to know your own city. What are you good for if you can't
take a foreigner to his consul's?" "Signore," answered the driver
patiently, "you would have to get a book in two volumes by heart,
in order to be able to find everybody in Genoa. This city is a
labyrinth."

Truly, it had so proved, and I could scarcely believe in my good luck
when I actually found my friend, and set out with him on a ramble
through its toils.

A very great number of the streets in Genoa are footways mere