All the transactions of daily life have to be conducted in Rome, as every householder soon learns, at the cost of a continuous and exasperating conflict with a class to whom it is second nature to cheat and deceive, to falsify weights and measures, who have no standard of honesty in small things, and who will always say what will please you or themselves rather than what is. The visitor naturally is their peculiar prey. To exploit him is traditional in Rome. In a town with no resources of its own, there is the foreigner and his purse to look to; and he falls an easy victim to people whose language he imperfectly understands, and who are past-masters of all the deceitful arts. The seasons are short and a plentiful harvest must be raked in while they last. Shops in the best quarters will raise the value of their goods a hundred per cent at the sight of a foreign face. Unless the legend "fixed prices" appears in the window for the benefit of the customer, the shopmen will expect you to bargain over every purchase--to haggle for half an hour over a question of six sous or ten is indeed the only commercial instinct they possess. They will generally ask about twice as much as they mean ultimately to accept, and, to their credit be it said, it is not only for the sake of the francs more or less, but quite as much for the excitement of the sport. "I say 200 lire, now it is for you to say something;" or, "The price is so-and-so, what will you give?" are the preludes to some really enjoyable quarters of an hour. The foreigner who pays unquestioningly what he is asked is a poor-spirited creature not worth fleecing.