Let me try
the effect of one or two more scenes from my past travelling
experience in this particular division of the Italian peninsula before
I decide.
Black Mirror! how did I end my evening at the comfortable inn?
The cloud passes again, heavily and thickly this time, over the
surface of the mirror--clears away slowly--shows me myself dozing
luxuriously by the red embers with an empty bottle at my side. A
suddenly-opening door wakes me up; the landlord of the inn approaches,
places a long, official-looking book on the table, and hands me pen
and ink. I inquire peevishly what I am wanted to write at that time of
night, when I am just digesting my dinner. The landlord answers
respectfully that I am required to give the police a full, true, and
particular account of myself. I approach the table, thinking this
demand rather absurd, for my passport is already in the hands of the
authorities. However, as I am in a despotic country, I keep my
thoughts to myself, open a blank page in the official-looking book,
see that it is divided into columns, with printed headings, and find
that I no more understand what they mean than I understand an assessed
tax-paper at home, to which by-the-bye, the blank page bears a
striking general resemblance. The headings are technical official
words, which I now meet with as parts of Italian speech for the first
time. I am obliged to appeal to the polite landlord, and, by his
assistance, I get gradually to understand what it is the Austrian
police want of me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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