asked the steward where I should put up, and his answer was:

"Wherever you please, provided you let this man know where it is, so that
he can give you notice when the peotta is ready to sail. My duty," he
added, "is to leave you at the lazzaretto of Ancona free of expense from
the moment we leave this place. Until then enjoy yourself as well as you
can."

The man to whom I was to give my address was the captain of the peotta. I
asked him to recommend me a lodging.

"You can come to my house," he said, "if you have no objection to share a
large bed with the cook, whose wife remains on board."

Unable to devise any better plan, I accepted the offer, and a sailor,
carrying my trunk, accompanied me to the dwelling of the honest captain.
My trunk had to be placed under the bed which filled up the room. I was
amused at this, for I was not in a position to be over-fastidious, and,
after partaking of some dinner at the inn, I went about the town. Chiozza
is a peninsula, a sea-port belonging to Venice, with a population of ten
thousand inhabitants, seamen, fishermen, merchants, lawyers, and
government clerks.

I entered a coffee-room, and I had scarcely taken a seat when a young
doctor-at-law, with whom I had studied in Padua, came up to me, and
introduced me to a druggist whose shop was near by, saying that his house
was the rendezvous of all the literary men of the place. A few minutes
afterwards, a tall Jacobin friar, blind of one eye, called Corsini, whom
I had known in Venice, came in and paid me many compliments. He told me
that I had arrived just in time to go to a picnic got up by the Macaronic