November, 1864, that we had taken the longest road to Rome. We thought
that of all the proverbial paths to the Eternal City that leading to
Padua, and thence through Ferrara and Bologna to Florence, and so
down the sea-shore from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, was the best, the
briefest, and the cheapest. Who could have dreamed that this path,
so wisely and carefully chosen, would lead us to Genoa, conduct us on
shipboard, toss us four dizzy days and nights, and set us down, void,
battered, and bewildered, in Naples? Luckily,

"The moving accident is not my trade,"

for there are events of this journey (now happily at an end) which,
if I recounted them with unsparing sincerity, would forever deter the
reader from taking any road to Rome.

Though, indeed, what is Rome, after all, when you come to it?




II.

FROM PADUA TO FERRARA.

As far as to Ferrara there was no sign of deviation from the direct
line in our road, and the company was well enough. We had a Swiss
family in the car with us to Padua, and they told us how they were
going home to their mountains from Russia, where they had spent
nineteen years of their lives. They were mother and father and only
daughter and the last, without ever having seen her ancestral country,