Sunrise found us almost abreast of the harbour:  and the clocks from the city churches were striking seven as we rounded up under the great mole on the eastern side of the entrance and floated into the calm basin within.  I confess that my heart sank as Genoa opened in panorama before us, spreading in a vast semicircle with its dockyards and warehouses, its palaces, its roofs climbing in terrace after terrace to the villas and flower-gardens on the heights:  nor was this sense of our impudence lessened by reflecting that, once within the mole, we had not a notion to which of the quays a fishing-boat ought to steer to avoid suspicion.  But here, again, fortune helped us.  To the right, at the extreme inner corner of the mole, I espied half a dozen boats, not unlike our own, huddled close under a stone stairway; and I had no sooner thrust down the helm than a man, catching sight of us, came running along the mole to barter.

Marc’antonio’s conduct of the ensuing bargain was nothing short of masterly.  The stranger—­a fishmonger’s runner—­turned as he met us and trotted alongside, shaping his hands like a trumpet and bawling down his price.  Marc’antonio, affecting a slight deafness, signalled to him to bawl louder, hunched his shoulders, shook his head vehemently, held up ten fingers, then eight, then (after a long and passionate protest from above) eight again.  By this time two other traffickers had joined the contest, and with scarcely a word on his side Marc’antonio kept them going, as a juggler plays with three balls.  Not until our boat’s nose grated alongside the landing was the bargain concluded, and the first runner, a bag of silver in his fist, almost tumbled upon us down the slippery stairs in his hurry to clinch it.

I stepped ashore and held out a hand to the Princess who, in her character of paesana, very properly ignored it.  Luckily the courtesy escaped notice.  Stephanu was making fast the boat; the runner counting his coins into Marc’antonio’s hand.

The Princess and I mounted the stairs and, after a pretence to loiter and await our comrades, strolled off towards the city around the circuit of the quay.  We passed the great warehouses of the Porto Franco, staring up at them, but impassively, in true country fashion, and a little beyond them came to the entrance of a street which—­for it was strewn with cabbage leaves and other refuse—­we judged to lead to the vegetable market.

“Let us turn aside here,” said the Princess.  “I was brought up in a cabbage-market, remember; and the smell may help to put me at my ease.”

Now along the quays we had met and passed but a few idlers, the hour being early for business; but in the market, when we reached it, we found a throng—­citizens and citizens’ wives and housekeepers, all armed with baskets and chaffering around the stalls.  The crowd daunted me at first; but finding it too intent to heed us, I drew breath and was observing it at leisure when my eyes fell on the back of a man who, bending over a stall on my right, held forth a cabbage in one hand while with the other—­so far as the basket on his arm allowed—­he gesticulated violently, cheapening the price against an equally voluble saleswoman.