for I got pretty well
mistress of that before I had been there a year; and as I had leisure
enough and loved the language, I read all the Italian books I could come
at.

I began to be so in love with Italy, especially with Naples and Venice,
that I could have been very well satisfied to have sent for Amy and have
taken up my residence there for life.

As to Rome, I did not like it at all. The swarms of ecclesiastics of all
kinds on one side, and the scoundrel rabbles of the common people on the
other, make Rome the unpleasantest place in the world to live in. The
innumerable number of valets, lackeys, and other servants is such that
they used to say that there are very few of the common people in Rome
but what have been footmen, or porters, or grooms to cardinals or
foreign ambassadors. In a word, they have an air of sharping and
cozening, quarrelling and scolding, upon their general behaviour; and
when I was there the footmen made such a broil between two great
families in Rome, about which of their coaches (the ladies being in the
coaches on either side) should give way to the other, that there was
about thirty people wounded on both sides, five or six killed outside,
and both the ladies frighted almost to death.

But I have no mind to write the history of my travels on this side of
the world, at least not now; it would be too full of variety.

I must not, however, omit that the prince continued in all this journey
the most kind, obliging person to me in the world, and so constant that,
though we were in a country where it is well known all manner of
liberties are taken, I am yet well assured he neither took the liberty
he knew he might have, or so much as desired it.

I have often thought of this noble person on that account. Had he been
but half so true, so faithful and constant, to the best lady in the
world--I mean his princess--how glorious a virtue had it been in him!
And how free had he been from those just reflections which touched him
in her behalf when it was too late!

We had some very agreeable conversations upon this subject, and once he
told me, with a kind of more than ordinary concern upon his thoughts,
that he was greatly beholden to me for taking this hazardous and
difficult journey, for that I had kept him honest. I looked up in his
face, and coloured as red as fire. "Well, well," says he, "do not let
that surprise you, I do say you have kept me honest." "My lord," said I,
"'tis not for me t