My Friend the ChauffeurWilliamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
General
My Friend the Chauffeur
Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
Automobiles -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
Mr. Barrymore understood, however, and only just in time to save an
accident, for it seemed that we were on the wrong side of the road.
Suddenly and arbitrarily it was the rule to keep on the left side
instead of the right, and the Chauffeulier shot across before a tram,
approaching at the speed of a train, could run us down.
"That's the worst of this part of Italy," I heard him shout over the din
to Maida. "Any town that chooses makes a different rule for itself and
its suburbs, and then expects strangers to know by instinct just where
and when it changes."
It was like being shot out of a catapult from the Inferno straight to
Paradise, as Sir Ralph said, when suddenly we saved ourselves from the
hurly-burly, flashing into a noble square with room for a thousand
street-cars and as many automobiles to browse together in peace and
harmony.
A mass of glimmering white towers and pinnacles, the Cathedral rose, a
miracle of beauty in the flood of moonlight that turned grey into white,
old marble into snow, and gave to each of the myriad carvings the
lace-like delicacy of frost-work.
"I wanted you to see the Duomo first by moonlight," said Mr. Barrymore,
after we had sat still, gazing up for some moments, with even the car
motionless and silent. "To-morrow morning you can come again for the
detail, and spend as much time as you like inside, for I hope it won't
take us many hours to run to Bellagio; but you will never forget
to-night's impression."
"I shall never forget anything that has happened, or that we've seen on
this trip," Maida answered, in a voice that told me how much she felt
her words. But if she had anything more to say the motor impolitely
drowned it, and we were whirled away again via pandemonium, to quite a
grand hotel.
The first person we met in a big, square hall full of
wicker chairs and tables, was Prince Dalmar-Kalm, in evening dress,
looking as calm as if he had never heard of an automobile. He flung
agreeable smiles at Maida and me, but his real welcome was for his
"chere Comtesse," and she was delighted, poor dear, to be made much of
at the expense of two girls, one a beauty.
"I arrived over an hour ago," he said, "very dusty, a little tired, a
good deal hungry; but, of course, I would not have dreamed of dining
without you."
"Did you get in on the car, or on the cars, this time?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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