again, and was again deferred, when I went at once to the tribunal and made a claim for my spoons.  On statement of the case, the judge gave an order for the immediate and unconditional delivery of the plate; but when I went to get them at the tribunal, he said it was lucky for me that I came when I did, as the landlady had come in the afternoon and applied for an order against me to pay another month’s rent (always paid in advance), and that if she had come first he should have been obliged to give it to her.  I explained that I had been driven out of the apartment by another occupant; but that, he said, made no difference, the first applicant for justice would alone have been heard.

Not long after, a similar case called for my more or less official recognition.  My colleague the consul at Florence had come for a visit to Rome, and had taken a cab to make the rounds of the sights, and, making his visit to the church of Ara Coeli, he of course left the cab at the foot of the stairs.  He found little which interested him in the church, and, returning sooner than the cabman expected, he found no cab there.  In the course of the day he went to the police court and asked for a punishment for the cabman for having deserted him on his round.  The cabman was summoned and fined accordingly; but the magistrate remarked to my friend when he came to give evidence that it was fortunate for him that he complained first, for the cabman had come later in the day and asked for his fare for the night which he had passed at the foot of the stairs waiting for the return of the forestiero; and he added that if the cabman had come first, my friend would have been obliged to pay the claim.  It was simple and expeditious, first come being first served, but hardly good civil administration.

At the time of the expedition of Garibaldi which ended at Aspromonte, the excitement in the city was intense, and the panic on the part of the ecclesiastical population so great that they mainly took refuge in the convents and villages of the mountain country.  I had occasion to see the Pope at that time, and found him in profound despondency, evidently persuaded that Garibaldi would come to Rome.  He said to me that he was convinced that the great day of tribulation prophesied for the church had come, and it would have its fifty years of oppression, after which it would arise again more glorious than ever; but there was no question that in his mind the French garrison was not for the moment an efficient protection.  The Italian party in the city was very small, but active, and in those days especially so.  The priests were insulted and menaced whenever it was possible to reach them covertly, and finally one was stabbed in a crowd.  Many arrests were made, and amongst those arrested was an exile who had ventured into the city to visit his friends.  He was put on trial for the stabbing, and, though he proved an alibi, he was condemned to death, for “some example must be made,”