Victor Emanuel.
"Papa Camillo's" servant's kinsman's life being endangered, an order had
come from Turin only a few hours before our diligence arrived at the
bank of the dangerous stream,--now swollen into a swift, broad
river,--decreeing that the new road and bridge, lately in course of
construction on this spot, should be opened immediately for passage to
and fro. The road was more like a stone-quarry than a carriageable
public highway, so encumbered was it with granite fragments, heaped
ready for top-dressing and finishing; and the bridge led on to a raised
embankment, coming to a sudden fissure, where the old coach-road crossed
it. Still, our conductor, finding that some few carts and one diligence
had actually passed over the ground, set himself to the work of getting
ours also across. First, the insides and outsides were abstracted from
the coach,--which they had by this time come to regard as quite an
extraneous part of their travelling, not so much a "conveyance" as
something to be conveyed,--and the four took their way over the stones,
amused at this new and most unexpected obstacle to their progress.
Hastening across the fissure, they went and placed themselves (always
under umbrellas) beside a troop of little vagabond boys,--who had come
to see the fun, and had secured good front places on the opposite
bank,--to view the diligence brought down the sharp declivity of the
embankment to the old road below. The spectators beheld the jolting
vehicle come slowly and gratingly along, like a sturdy recusant, holding
back, until the straining horses had tugged it by main force to the
brink of the fissure. Here the animals stopped, snorted, eyed the sheer
descent with twitching ears and quivering skins, as though they said in
equine language, "We're surely not required to drag it down _this_!"
They were soon relieved from their doubt, by being taken out of the
traces, patted, and gently led down the embankment, leaving their
burdensome charge behind. There it stuck, helplessly alone,--even more
thoroughly belying its own name than diligences usually do,--perched on
the edge of a declivity of the height of a tall house, stock still,
top-heavy with piled luggage, deserted by its passengers, abandoned of
its friend in the velvet cap, a motionless and apparently objectless
coach. How it was to be dislodged and conveyed down the "vast abrupt"
became matter of conjecture to the four, when presently some men came to
the spot