Читать книгу Two Pilgrims' Progress; from fair Florence, to the eternal city of Rome - Joseph Pennell - Страница 4

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"They are a couple of far-country men, and, after their mode, are going on Pilgrimage."

We stayed in Florence three days before we started on our pilgrimage to Rome. We needed a short rest. The railway journey straight through from London had been unusually tiresome because of our tricycle. From the first mention of our proposed pilgrimage, kind friends in England had warned us that on the way to Italy the machine would be a burden worse than the Old Man of the Sea; porters, guards, and custom-house officials would look upon it as lawful prey, and we should pay more to get it to Italy than it had cost in the beginning. It is wonderful how clever one's friends are to discover the disagreeable, and then how eager to point it out!

Our first experience at the station at Holborn Viaduct seemed to confirm their warnings. We paid eight shillings to have the tricycle carried to Dover, porters amiably remarking it would take a pile of money to get such a machine to Italy. Crossing the Channel, we paid five-and-sixpence more, and the sailors told us condolingly we should have an awful time of it in the custom-house at Calais. This, however, turned out a genuine seaman's yarn. The tricycle was examined carefully, but to be admired, not valued. "That's well made, that!" one guard declared with appreciation, and others playfully urged him to mount it. To make a long story short, our friends proved false prophets. From Calais to Florence we paid only nine francs freight and thirty-five francs duty at Chiasso. But unfortunately we never knew what might be about to happen. We escaped in one place only to be sure the worst would befall us in the next. It was not until the cause of our anxiety was safe in Florence that our mental burden was taken away.

But here were more friends who called our pilgrimage a desperate journey, and asked if we had considered what we might meet with in the way we were going. There was the cholera. But we represented that to get to Rome we should not go near the stricken provinces. Then they persisted that our road lay through valleys reeking with malaria until November at least. We should not reach these valleys before November, was our reply. Well, then, did we know we must pass through lonely districts where escaped convicts roamed abroad; and in and out of villages where fleas were like unto a plague of Egypt, and good food as scarce as in the wilderness? In a word, ours was a fool's errand. Perhaps it was because so little had come of the earlier prophecies that we gave slight heed to these. They certainly made no difference in our plans. On October 16, the third morning after our arrival, we rode forth sans flea-powder or brandy, sans quinine or beef-extract, sans everything our friends counselled us to take—and hence, according to them, right into the jaws of death.