the harnessing of fresh horses. He is tipsy,
familiar, and confidential; he first apostrophises
the calèche with contemptuous curses,
then takes me mysteriously aside, and
declares that the whole high road onward to our
morning's destination swarms with thieves.
It seems, then, that the Austrian police
reserve all their vigilance for innocent
travellers, and leave local rogues entirely
unmolested. I make this reflection, and ask the
postmaster what he recommends us to do for
the protection of our portmanteaus, which
are tied on to the roof of the calèche. He
answers that unless we take special
precautions, the thieves will get up behind, on
our crazy foot-board, and will cut the trunks
off the top of our frowsy travelling-carriage,
under cover of the night, while we are
quietly seated inside, seeing and suspecting
nothing. We instantly express our readiness
to take any precautions that anyone may be
kind enough to suggest. The postmaster
winks, lays his finger archly on the side of his
nose, and gives an unintelligible order in the
patois of the district. Before I have time to
ask what he is going to do, every idler about
the posthouse who can climb, scales the
summit of the calèche, and every idler who
cannot, stands roaring and gesticulating
below with a lighted candle in his hand.
While the hubbub is at its loudest, a rival
travelling-carriage suddenly drives into the
midst of us, in the shape of a huge barrel-
organ on wheels, and bursts out awfully in
the darkness with the grand march in
Semiramide, played with the utmost fury of
the drum, cymbal, and trumpet-stops. The
noise is so bewildering that my travelling
companion and I take refuge inside our
carriage, and shut our eyes, and stop our ears,
and abandon ourselves to despair. After a
time, our elbows are jogged, and a string
a-piece is given to us through each window.
We are informed in shouts, accompanied in
the most inspiriting manner by the grand
march, that the strings are fastened to our
portmanteaus above; that we are to keep
the loose ends round our forefingers all
night; and that the moment we feel a tug,
we may be quite certain the thieves are at
work, and may feel justified in stopping the
carriage and fighting for our baggage without
any more ado. Under these agreeable
auspices, we start again, with our strings
round our forefingers. We feel like men
about to ring the bell, or like men engaged in
deep sea-fishing, or like men on the point of
pulling the string of a shower-bath. Fifty
times at least, during the next stage, each of
us is certain that he feels a tug, and pops his
head agitatedly out of window, and sees
absolutely nothing, and falls back again
exhausted with excitement in a corner of the
calèche. All through the night this wear and
tear of our nerves goes on; and all through
the night (thanks, probably, to the ceaseless
popping of our heads out of the windows)
not the ghost of a thief comes near us. To
begin, at last, almost to feel that it would be
a relief to be robbed—almost to doubt the
policy of resisting any mercifully-larcenous
hands stretched forth to rescue us from the
incubus of our own baggage. The morning
dawn finds us languid and haggard with the
accursed portmanteau-strings dangling
unregarded in the bottom of the calèche. And this
is taking our pleasure! This is an incident
of travel in Austrian Italy! Faithful Black
Mirror, accept my thanks. The warning of
the two last dream-scenes that you have
shown me shall not be disregarded.
Whatever other direction I may take when I go
out of town for the present season, one road
at least I know that I shall avoid—the road
that leads to Austrian Italy.

Shall I keep on the northern side of the
Alps, and travel a little, let us say, in German-
Switzerland? Black Mirror! how did I get
on when I was last in that country? Did I
like my introductory experience at my first
inn?

The vision changes, and takes me again to
the outside of a house of public entertainment;
a great white, clean, smooth-fronted, opulent-
looking hotel—a very different building from
my dingy, cavernous Italian inn. At the
street-door stands the landlord. He is a
little, lean, rosy man, dressed all in black
and looking like a master undertaker. I
observe that he neither steps forward or
smiles when I get out of the carriage and ask
for a bedroom. He gives me the shortest
possible answer, growls guttural instructions
to a waiter, then looks out into the
street again, and, before I have so much as
turned my back on him, forgets my existence
immediately. The vision changes again, and
takes me inside the hotel. I am following a
waiter up-stairs—the man looks unaffectedly
sorry to see me. In the bedroom corridor we
find a chambermaid asleep with her head on a
table. She is woke up; opens a door with a
groan, and scowls at me reproachfully when
I say that the room will do. I descend to
dinner. Two waiters attend on me, under
protest, and look as if they were on the point
of giving warning every time I require them
to change my plate. At the second course
the landlord comes in, and stands and stares
at me intently and silently with his hands in
his pockets. This may be his way of seeing
that my dinner is well served; but it looks
much more like his way of seeing that I do
not abstract any spoons from his table. I
become irritated by the boorish staring and
frowning of everybody about me, and express
myself strongly on the subject of my reputation
at the hotel to an English traveller dining
near me. He is one of those exasperating
men who are always ready to put up with
injuries, and he coolly accounts for the
behaviour of which I complain, by telling me
that it is the result of the blunt honesty of
the natives, who cannot pretend to take an