The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl,
and was taken a little aback when she said he might
for a franc! The commonest gallantry compelled
him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc
and took the kiss. She was a philosopher.
She said a franc was a good thing to have, and she
did not care any thing for one paltry kiss, because
she had a million left. Then our comrade, always
a shrewd businessman, offered to take the whole cargo
at thirty days, but that little financial scheme was
a failure.
We left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or
seven miles behind us; vast, dreamy, bluish, snow-clad
mountains twenty miles in front of us,—these
were the accented points in the scenery. The
more immediate scenery consisted of fields and farm-houses
outside the car and a monster-headed dwarf and a moustached
woman inside it. These latter were not show-people.
Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in
Italy to attract attention.
We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills,
steep, wooded, cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting
here and there, and with dwellings and ruinous castles
perched away up toward the drifting clouds. We
lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot
of the lake, and then took the small steamer and had
an afternoon’s pleasure excursion to this place,—Bellaggio.
When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people
whose cocked hats and showy uniforms would shame the
finest uniform in the military service of the United
States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked
us in. We had the whole passenger list for company,
but their room would have been preferable, for there
was no light, there were no windows, no ventilation.
It was close and hot. We were much crowded.
It was the Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale.
Presently a smoke rose about our feet—a
smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth,
of all the putrefaction and corruption imaginable.
We were there five minutes, and when we got out it
was hard to tell which of us carried the vilest fragrance.
These miserable outcasts called that “fumigating”
us, and the term was a tame one indeed. They
fumigated us to guard themselves against the cholera,
though we hailed from no infected port. We had
left the cholera far behind us all the time.
However, they must keep epidemics away somehow or
other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They
must either wash themselves or fumigate other people.
Some of the lower classes had rather die than wash,
but the fumigation of strangers causes them no pangs.
They need no fumigation themselves. Their habits
make it unnecessary. They carry their preventive
with them; they sweat and fumigate all the day long.
I trust I am a humble and a consistent Christian.
I try to do what is right. I know it is my duty
to “pray for them that despitefully use me;”
and therefore, hard as it is, I shall still try to
pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing organ-grinders.
