It was not until the evening, however, when we were talking to some Milwaukee people, that we remembered, with the assistance of Baedeker and the Milwaukee people, a number of facts about Columbus that deprived Alessandro’s information of its commercial value, while leaving his ingenuity, so to speak, at par.  The Senator was so much annoyed, as he had made a special note of the state of preservation in which he had found the dwelling of our discoverer, that he had recourse to the most unscrupulous means of relieving us of Alessandro—­who was to present himself next morning at eleven.  He wrote an impulsive letter to “A.  Bebbini, Esq.,” which ran: 

“SIR:  I find that we are too credulous a family to travel in safety with a courier.  When you arrive at the hotel to-morrow, therefore, you will discover that we have fled by an earlier train.  We take it from no personal objection to your society, but from a rooted and unconquerable objection to brass facts.  I enclose your month’s salary and a warning that any attempt to follow me will be fruitless and expensive.”

“Yours truly,”
“J.P.  WICK.”

The Senator assured me afterwards that this was absolutely necessary—­that A. Bebbini, if we introduced him in any quantity, would ruin the sale of our work, and if he accompanied us it would be impossible to keep him out.  He said we ought to apologize for having even mentioned him in a book of travels which we hope to see taken seriously.  And we do.

CHAPTER IX.

Momma wishes me to state that the word Italy, in any language, will for ever be associated in her mind with the journey from Genoa to Pisa.  We had our own lunch basket, so no baneful anticipation of cutlets fried in olive oil marred the perfect satisfaction with which we looked out of the windows.  One window, almost the whole way, opened on a low embankment which seemed a garden wall.  Olives and lemon trees grew beyond it and dropped over, and it was always dipping in the sunlight to show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside, white and remote; now and then we saw the pillared end of a verandah or a plaster Neptune ruling a restricted fountain area.  Out of the other window stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling, with freakish little points and headlines, and here and there the white blossom of a sail.  The Senator counted eighty tunnels—­he wants that fact mentioned too—­some of them so short that it was like shutting one’s eyes for an instant on the olives and the sea.  Nevertheless it was an idyllic journey, and at four o’clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower from afar, describing the precise angle that it does in the illustrated geographies.  Momma was charmed to recognise it, she blew it a kiss of adulation and acclaim, while we yet wound about among the environs, and hailed it “Pisa!” It was as if she bowed to a celebrity, with the homage due.