r articles of
jewellery; but his purse and sovereigns he contrived to drop among the
straw at the bottom of the vehicle. All the rest fared as he did, and
some of them worse, for they lost their money as well as jewels. These
grave proceedings were diversified by a somewhat humorous incident. The
coachman had providently put his dinner in the form of a sausage, rolled
in brown paper, under his seat. This is the form in which Austrian
zwanzigers are commonly made up; and the brigands, fancying the
coachman's sausage to be a roll of silver zwanzigers, seized on it with
avidity, and bore it off in triumph. They were proceeding to rifle the
baggage, when, hearing the horse-patrol approaching, they plunged into
the thicket as suddenly as they had appeared. The morning chimes were
sounding, as on the previous day, while this operation was going on. But
what is not a little extraordinary is, that all this took place within
two miles of the city gates of Bologna, where there could not be fewer
than twelve thousand Austrian soldiers. But these, I presume, were too
much engaged on this, as on previous nights, in apprehending and
imprisoning the citizens in the Pope's behalf, to think of looking after
brigands. In Peter's privileged patrimony one may rob, murder, and break
every command of the decalogue, and defy the police, provided he obey
the Church. Were I to travel that road again, I would provide myself
with a tinsel watch and appendages, and a sausage carefully rolled up in
paper, to avoid the unpleasantness of meeting such wellwishers
empty-handed.

In another half hour we came to the spurs of the Apennines. The day was
breaking, and its light, I hoped, would lay open many a sweet dell and
many a romantic peak, before evening. These hopes, as, alas! too often
happens in the longer journey of life, were to be suddenly dashed. I
felt a warm, suffocating current of air breathing over the valley, and
looked up to see the furnace whence, as I supposed, it proceeded. This
was the sirocco, the herald of the tempest that soon thereafter burst
upon us. Masses of whitish cloud came rolling over the summits of the
hills; furious gusts came down upon us from the heights; and in a few
minutes we found ourselves contending with a hurricane such as I have
never seen equalled save on one other occasion. The cloud became
fearfully black, and made the lightning the more awful as it touched
with fire the peaks around us, and bathed in an oce