The choice of either of these means of travel had presented itself in vivid hues of disadvantage all the way from Rome to the Papal port, where the French steamer for Leghorn lay dancing a hornpipe upon the short, chopping waves, while we approached by railway.  We had leisure enough to make the decision, if that was all we wanted.  Our engine-driver had derived his ideas of progress from an Encyclical Letter, and the train gave every promise of arriving at Civita Vecchia five hundred years behind time.  But such was the desolating and depressing influence of the weather and the landscape, that we reached Civita Vecchia as undecided as we had left Rome.  On the one hand, there had been the land, soaked and sodden,—­wild, shagged with scrubby growths of timber and brooded over by sullen clouds, and visibly inhabited only by shepherds, leaning upon their staves at an angle of forty-five degrees, and looking, in their immovable dejection, with their legs wrapped in long-haired goat-skins, like satyrs that had been converted, and were trying to do right; turning dim faces to us, they warned us with every mute appeal against the land, as a waste of mud from one end of Italy to the other.  On the other hand, there was the sea-wind raving about our train and threatening to blow it over, and whenever we drew near the coast, heaping the waves upon the beach in thundering menace.

We weakly and fearfully remembered our former journeys by diligence over broken railway routes; we recalled our cruel voyage from Genoa to Naples by sea; and in a state of pitiable dismay we ate five francs’ worth at the restaurant of the Civita Vecchia station before we knew it, and long before we had made up our minds.  Still we might have lingered and hesitated, and perhaps returned to Rome at last, but for the dramatic resolution of the old man who solicited passengers for the diligence, and carried their passports for a final Papal visa at the police-office.  By the account he gave of himself, he was one of the best men in the world, and unique in those parts for honesty and truthfulness; and he besought us, out of that affectionate interest with which our very aspect had inspired him, not to go by steamer, but to go by diligence, which in nineteen hours would land us safe, and absolutely refreshed by the journey, at the railway station in Follonica.  And now, once, would we go by diligence? twice, would we go? three times, would we go?

“Signore,” said our benefactor, angrily, “I lose my time with you;” and ran away, to be called back in the course of destiny, as he knew well enough, and besought to take us as a special favor.

From the passports he learned that there was official dignity among us, and addressed the unworthy bearer of public honors as Eccellenza, and, at parting bequeathed his advantage to the conductor, commending us all in set terms to his courtesy.  He hovered caressingly about us as long as we remained, straining politeness to do us some last little service; and when the diligence rolled away, he did all that one man could to give us a round of applause.