The effect was awful. He stood and stared at me, as if petrified, for a moment. Then the blood rushed into his face, and, turning on his heel, he took off his hat, said suddenly, "_Buona sera_," and carried my fact and his opinions together up into his private room. I am afraid that Don Pietro decided, on consideration, that I had been taking unwarrantable liberties with him, and exceeding all proper bounds, in my attempt to impose on his good-nature. From that time forward he asked me no more questions about America. And here, by the way, I am reminded of an incident, which, though not exactly pertinent, may find here a parenthetical place, merely as illustrating some points of Italian character. One fact and two names relating to America they know universally,--Columbus and his discovery of America, and Washington. "_Sì, Signore_," said a respectable person some time since, as he was driving me to see a carriage which he wished to sell me, and therefore desired to be particularly polite to me and my nation,--"a great man, your Vashintoni! but I was sorry to hear, the other day, that his father had died in London." "His father dead, and in London?" I stammered, completely confounded at this extraordinary news, and fearing lest I had been too stupid in misunderstanding him. "Yes," he said, "it is too true that his father Vellintoni is dead. I read it in the _Diario di Roma_." But better than this was the ingenious argument of a _Frate_, whom I met on board a steamer in going from Leghorn to Genoa, and who, having pumped out the fact that I was an American, immediately began to "improve" it in a discourse on Columbus. So he informed me that Columbus was an Italian, and that he had discovered America, and was a remarkable man; to all of which I readily assented, as being true, if not new. But now a severe abstract question began to tax my friend's powers. He said, "But how could he ever have imagined that the continent of America was there? That's the question. It is extraordinary indeed!" And so he sat cogitating, and saying, at intervals, "_Curioso! Straordinario!_" At last "a light broke in upon his brain." Some little bird whispered the secret. His face lightened, and, looking at me, he said, "Perhaps he may have read that it was there in some old book, and so went to see if it were or no." Vainly I endeavored to show him that this view would deprive Columbus of his greatest distinction. He answered invariably, "But without having read it, how could he ever have known it?"--thus putting the earth upon the tortoise and leaving the tortoise to account for his own support.