I Resolved To Take The Second
Excursion, Not The Next Day Perhaps, But Certainly The Day After The
Next, And Complete The Most Compendious Impression Of Ancient,
Mediaeval, And Modern Rome That One Can Have; But The Firmest Resolution
Sometimes Has Not Force To Hold One To It.
The second excursion remains
for a second sojourn, when perhaps I may be able to solve the question
whether I was moved by a fine instinct of proportion or by mere innate
meanness in giving our orator at parting just two francs in recognition
of his eloquence.
No one else, indeed, gave him anything, and he seemed
rather surprised by my tempered munificence. It might have been
mystically adjusted to the number of languages he used in addressing us;
if he had held to three languages I might have made it three francs; but
now I shall never be certain till I take the second excursion with a
company which imperatively requires English as well as French and
German, and with no solitary in yellow gloves to whom all languages are
alike.
To this end I ought to have thrown a copper coin into the Fountain of
Trevi as we passed it. You may return to Rome without doing this, but it
is well known that if you do it you are sure to come back. The Fountain
of Trevi is alone worth coming back for, and I could not see that it
poured scanter streams than it formerly poured over brimming brinks or
from the clefts of the artificial rocks that spread in fine disorder
about the feet of its sea-gods and sea-horses; but they who mourn the
old papal rule accuse the present Italian government of stinting the
supply of water.
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