"A diligence is a creature that leaves at a fixed hour, and its
passengers run to it; a vetturino leaves at all hours, and runs
after its passengers. Hardly have you set your foot out of the
boat that brings you from the steam-vessel to the shore, than
you are assailed, stifled, dragged, deafened by twenty drivers,
who look on you as their merchandise, and treat you
accordingly, and would end by carrying you off bodily, if they
could agree among them who should have the booty. Families have
been separated at the port of Livorno, to find each other how
they could in the streets of Florence. In vain you jump into a
_fiacre_, they leap up before, above, behind; and at the gate
of the hotel, there you are in the midst of the same group of
villains, who are only the more clamorous for having been kept
waiting. Reduced to extremities, you declare that you have come
to Livorno upon commercial business, and that you intend
staying eight days at least, and you ask of the _garçon_, loud
enough for all to hear, if there is an apartment at liberty for
the next week. At this they will sometimes abandon the prey,
which they reckon upon seizing at some future time; they run
back with all haste to the port to catch some other traveller,
and you are free.

"Nevertheless, if about an hour after this you should wish to
leave the hotel, you will find one or two sentinels at the
gate. These are connected with the hotel, and they have been
forewarned by the _garçon_ that it will not be eight days
before you leave--that, in fact, you will leave to-morrow.
These it is absolutely necessary that you call in, and make
your treaty with. If you should have the imprudence to issue
forth into the street, fifty of the brotherhood will be