“Rome is fine only to those who love it; a man must have a passion for it to enjoy it.  As a city, I prefer Venice,—­though I just missed being murdered there.”

“Faith, yes!” cried Mistigris; “if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been gobbled up.  It was that mischief-making tom-fool, Lord Byron, who got you into the scrape.  Oh! wasn’t he raging, that buffoon of an Englishman?”

“Hush!” said Schinner.  “I don’t want my affair with Lord Byron talked about.”

“But you must own, all the same, that you were glad enough I knew how to box,” said Mistigris.

From time to time, Pierrotin exchanged sly glances with the count, which might have made less inexperienced persons than the five other travellers uneasy.

“Lords, pachas, and thirty-thousand-franc ceilings!” he cried.  “I seem to be driving sovereigns.  What pourboires I’ll get!”

“And all the places paid for!” said Mistigris, slyly.

“It is a lucky day for me,” continued Pierrotin; “for you know, Pere Leger, about my beautiful new coach on which I have paid an advance of two thousand francs?  Well, those dogs of carriage-builders, to whom I have to pay two thousand five hundred francs more, won’t take fifteen hundred down, and my note for a thousand for two months!  Those vultures want it all.  Who ever heard of being so stiff with a man in business these eight years, and the father of a family?—­making me run the risk of losing everything, carriage and money too, if I can’t find before to-morrow night that miserable last thousand!  Hue, Bichette!  They won’t play that trick on the great coach offices, I’ll warrant you.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said the rapin; “‘your money or your strife.’”

“Well, you have only eight hundred now to get,” remarked the count, who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of credit drawn upon himself.

“True,” said Pierrotin.  “Xi! xi!  Rougeot!”

“You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice,” resumed the count, addressing Schinner.

“I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then mere trifles,” replied Schinner.  “But I was soon cured of that folly, for it was in the Venetian states—­in Dalmatia—­that I received a cruel lesson.”

“Can it be told?” asked Georges.  “I know Dalmatia very well.”

“Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that end of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from business, as they haven’t been hanged—­”

“Uscoques,” said Georges.

Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked at Georges, so surprised was he.

“The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino,” continued Schinner, seeming to search for a name.

“Zara,” said Georges.  “I’ve been there; it is on the coast.”