They took down our baggage in a twinkling,
and putting it all into the street surrounded it, and chattered over
it, while M. and I stood in the rain and received first lessons in
Italian. How we did try to say something! but they couldn't talk
anything but in "ino" as aforesaid. The doctor finally found a man who
could speak a word or two of French, and leaving Mary, Alfred, and me
to keep watch over our pile of trunks, he went off with him to apply
for lodgings. I have heard many flowery accounts of first impressions
of Rome. I must say ours was somewhat sombre.
A young man came by and addressed us in English. How cheering! We
almost flew upon him. We begged him, at least, to lend us his Italian
to call another carriage, and he did so. A carriage which was passing
was luckily secured, and Mary and I, with all our store of boxes and
little parcels, were placed in it out of the rain, at least. Here we
sat while the doctor from time to time returned from his wanderings to
tell us he could find no place. "Can it be," said I, "that we are to
be obliged to spend a night in the streets?" What made it seem more
odd was the knowledge that, could we only find them, we had friends
enough in Rome who would be glad to entertain us. We began to
speculate on lodgings. Who knows what we may get entrapped into?
Alfred suggested stories he had read of beds placed on trap-doors,--of
testers which screwed down on people and smothered them; and so, when
at last the doctor announced lodgings found, we followed in rather an
uncertain frame of mind.
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