If Our
Motives Were Not The Worst, They Were, At Any Rate, Not The Best; I
Suppose They Were The Usual Human Motives, And I Am Afraid They Were
Mixed.
We found it rather long from Genoa to Monte Carlo, but this was not so
much because of the
Distance as because of the delays of our train,
which, having started late, grew reckless on the way, and before we
reached the Italian frontier at Ventimiglia, had lost all shame and
failed to connect there with the French train for the rest of our
journey. So, instead of having barely time to affirm our innocence of
tobacco, spirits, or perfumes to the customs officers, and to wash down
a sandwich with a cup of coffee at the restaurant, we had an hour and
forty minutes at Ventimiglia, which I partly spent in vain attempts to
buy the poverty of the inspector so far as to prevail with him not to
delay the examination of our baggage, but to proceed to it at once, in
order that we might have it all off our minds, and devote our long
leisure to the inquiry by what steps the ancient Li-gurian tribe of the
Intemelii lost their name in its actual corruption of Ventimiglia. It is
a charming old town, far more charming than the stranger who never has
time to walk into it from the station can imagine, and there is a
palm-bordered avenue leading from the railway to the sea, with the shops
and cafes of Italy on one side and the shops and cafes of France on the
other.
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