so long as you answer an Italian he gets the better of you; entrench yourself in silence and he is impotent.  The driver’s impotence first exploded in fury and threats:  at least we should pay for the omnibus, for his time, for his trouble; yes, pay the whole way to Perugia and back, and his buon’ mano besides.  All the beggars who haunt the sanctuary of their patron had gathered about us, and from playing Greek chorus now began to give us advice:  “Yes, we would do well to go:  the only carriage in Assisi, and excellent, admirable!” The numbers of these vagrants, their officiousness, their fluency, were bewildering.  “But what are we to do?” asked my anxious companion.  “Why, if it comes to the worst, walk down to the station and take the night-train back.”  He walked away whistling, and I composed myself to a visage of stone and turned my eyes to the sculptures once more.  Suddenly the driver stopped short:  there was a minute’s pause, and then I heard a voice in the softest accents asking for something to buy a drink.  I turned round—­beside me stood the driver hat in hand:  “Yes, the signora is right, quite right:  I go, but she will give me something to get a drink?” I nearly laughed, but, biting my lips, I said firmly, “A drink?  Yes, if it be poison.”  The effect was astounding:  the man uttered an ejaculation, crossed himself, mounted his box and drove off; the beggars shrank away, stood aloof and exchanged awestruck whispers; only a few liquid-eyed little ragamuffins continued to turn somersets and stand on their heads undismayed.

Half an hour elapsed:  the sun was beginning to descend, when the sound of wheels was again heard, and a light wagon with four places and a brisk little horse came rattling down the street.  A pleasant-looking fellow jumped down, took off his hat and said he had come to drive us to Perugia.  We jumped up joyfully, but I asked the price.  “Fifty francs”—­a sum about equivalent to fifty dollars in those regions.  I smiled and shook my head:  he eagerly assured me that this included his buon mano and the cost of the oxen which we should be obliged to hire to drag us up some of the hills.  I shook my head again:  he shrugged and turned as if to go.  My unhappy fellow-traveler started forward:  “Give him whatever he asks and let us get away.”  I sat down again on the steps, saying in Italian, as if in soliloquy, that we should have to go by the train, after all.  Then the new-comer cheerfully came back:  “Well, signora, whatever you please to give.”  I named half his price—­an exorbitant sum, as I well knew—­and in a moment more we were skimming along over the hard, smooth mountain-roads:  we heard no more of those mythical beasts the oxen, and in two hours were safe in Perugia.

THE PARADOX.

  I wish that the day were over,
    The week, the month and the year;
  Yet life is not such a burden
    That I wish the end were near.