volume; and, turning over its pages, I traced with them my progress from London to the Po, and showed that, on the testimony of every passport-office and legation, I was a good man and true up to the further banks of their river; and that if I was other now, I must have become so in crossing, or since touching their soil. They gave me to understand, in reply, that all these testimonies went for nothing, seeing I wanted the _imprimatur_ of the papal consul in Venice. I assured them that omission was owing to misinformation I had received in Venice; that the Valet de Place (an authority in all such matters) at the Albergo dell' Europa had assured me that the two visees I had got in Venice were quite enough; and that the pontifical visee could be obtained in Ferrara or Bologna; and entreated them to permit me to go on to Ferrara, where I would lay my passport before the authorities, and have the error rectified. I shall never forget the emphasis with which the younger of the two officials replied, "Non possum." I had often declined "possum" to my old schoolmaster in former days, little dreaming that I was to hear the vocable pronounced with such terrible meaning in a little cell, at day-break, on the banks of the Po. The postilion cracked his whip,--I saw the _diligence_ move off,--and the sound of its retreating wheels seemed like a farewell to friends and home. A sad, desolate feeling weighed upon me as I turned to the faces of the police-officers and gendarmes in whose power I was left. We all went back together into the little apartment of the passport office, where I opened a conversation with them, in order to discover what was to be done with me,--whether I was to be sent back to Venice, or home to England, or simply thrown into the Po. I made rapid progress in my Italian studies that day; and had it been my hap to be arrested a dozen days on end by the papal authorities, I should by that time have been a fluent Italian speaker. The result of much questioning and explanation was, that if I liked to forward a petition to the authorities in Ferrara, accompanied by my passport, I should be permitted to wait where I was till an answer could be returned. It was my only alternative; and, hiring a special messenger, I sent him off with my passport, and a petition craving permission to enter "the States," addressed to the Pontifical Legation at Ferrara. Meanwhile, I had a gendarme to take care of me.