Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in EuropeWillis, Nathaniel Parker
General
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
Europe -- Description and travel
The remainder of the service was the usual ceremonies of the Catholic
church, and I amused myself with observing the people about me. It was
little like a scene of mourning. The officers gradually edged in
between the seats, and every woman with the least pretension to
prettiness was engaged in anything but her prayers for the soul of the
late Archduchess. Some of these, the very young girls, were pretty;
and the women, of thirty-five or forty apparently, were fine-looking;
but, except a decided air of style and rank, the fairly grown-up
belles seemed to me of very small attraction.
I saw little else in Nice to interest me. I wandered about with my
friend the surgeon, laughing at the ridiculous figures and villainous
uniforms of the Sardinian infantry, and repelling the beggars, who
radiated to us from every corner; and, having traversed the terrace of
a mile on the tops of the houses next the sea, unravelled all the
lanes of the old town, and admired all the splendor of the new, we
dined and got early to bed, anxious to sleep once more between sheets,
and prepare for an early start on the following morning.
* * * * *
We were on the road to Genoa with the first gray of the dawn: the
surgeon, a French officer, and myself, three passengers of a courier
barouche. We were climbing up mountains and sliding down with locked
wheels for several hours, by a road edging on precipices, and overhung
by tremendous rocks, and, descending at last to the sea-level, we
entered _Mentone_, a town of the little principality of _Monaco_.
Having paid our twenty sous tribute to this prince of a territory not
larger than a Kentucky farm, we were suffered to cross his borders
once more into Sardinia, having posted through a whole State in less
than half an hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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