There Was A Postilion, In The Course Of This Day's Journey, As Wild
And Savagely Good-Looking A Vagabond As
You would desire to see.
He was a tall, stout-made, dark-complexioned fellow, with a
profusion of shaggy black
Hair hanging all over his face, and great
black whiskers stretching down his throat. His dress was a torn
suit of rifle green, garnished here and there with red; a steeple-
crowned hat, innocent of nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather
stuck in the band; and a flaming red neckerchief hanging on his
shoulders. He was not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at his
ease, on a sort of low foot-board in front of the postchaise, down
amongst the horses' tails--convenient for having his brains kicked
out, at any moment. To this Brigand, the brave Courier, when we
were at a reasonable trot, happened to suggest the practicability
of going faster. He received the proposal with a perfect yell of
derision; brandished his whip about his head (such a whip! it was
more like a home-made bow); flung up his heels, much higher than
the horses; and disappeared, in a paroxysm, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the axle-tree. I fully expected to see him lying
in the road, a hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-
crowned hat again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a
sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, 'Ha, ha! what
next! Oh the devil! Faster too! Shoo--hoo--o--o!' (This last
ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being anxious to
reach our immediate destination that night, I ventured, by-and-by,
to repeat the experiment on my own account. It produced exactly
the same effect. Round flew the whip with the same scornful
flourish, up came the heels, down went the steeple-crowned hat, and
presently he reappeared, reposing as before and saying to himself,
'Ha ha! what next! Faster too! Oh the devil! Shoo--hoo--o--o!'
CHAPTER VII--AN ITALIAN DREAM
I had been travelling, for some days; resting very little in the
night, and never in the day. The rapid and unbroken succession of
novelties that had passed before me, came back like half-formed
dreams; and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion
through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. At
intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its
restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite
steadily, and behold it in full distinctness. After a few moments,
it would dissolve, like a view in a magic-lantern; and while I saw
some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at
all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen,
lingering behind it, and coming through it. This was no sooner
visible than, in its turn, it melted into something else.
At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown old rugged
churches of Modena.
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