Nothing However
Occurred And We Arrived At Terracina Without Accident.
The rascally
innkeeper there made Mr O - - - pay forty franks for each miserable room
that he occupied, and fifteen franks a head for his supper; he was very
insolent with all.
I was rejoiced to find that in one instance he failed in
his hopes of extortion. As he is obliged by law to furnish supper and beds
at a fixed price to those who travel with vetturini and are spesati,
he, whenever a vetturino arrives locks up all his decent chambers and
says that they are engaged, in order to keep them for those travellers who
may arrive in their own carriages and whom he can fleece ad libitum. A
friend of mine and his lady, who were travelling in their own carriage,
had, in order to avoid this extortion, engaged with a vetturino to
conduct them from Naples to Rome with his horses, but their own carriage,
and, had stipulated to be spesati. Mine host of Terracina, seeing a smart
carriage drive up, ordered one of his best rooms to be got ready, ushered
them in himself and returnd in half an hour to ask what they would have for
supper; when to his great astonishment and mortification, they referred him
for the arrangement of the supper to the vetturino, saying that they were
spesati. He then began to curse and swear, said that they should not have
that room, and wanted to turn them out of it forcibly; but my friend Major
G - - took up one of his pistols, which were lying on the table, and told
the innkeeper that if he did not cease to molest them and instantly quit
the room, he would blow out his brains. This threat had the desired effect,
and he withdrew. It appears that this fellow has in the end outwitted
himself, for most people now, who travel on this road in their own
carriage, chuse to travel with a vetturino and his horses and are
spesati, solely in order to avoid the extortion practised upon them.
We arrived at Naples on the 29th October without accident. A buona grazia
of a scudo at the frontier obviated the delay which would otherwise have
occurred in examining our baggage by the douaniers. I put up at No 1
Largo St Anna di Palazzo, near the Strada di Toledo, at the house of
one Berlier, who had been a domestic of poor Murat's. The Austrian troops
being now withdrawn, the military cordon of sentinels from the frontier to
Naples is kept up by the Neapolitan troops; but what a contrast between the
vigilance of the Austrian sentinels, and the negligence of the Neapolitans!
The last time I travelled on this road, I never failed, after dusk, to hear
the shout of Wer da? of the Austrian sentries, long before I came up to
them, and I always found them alert. Now that the cordon was Neapolitan, I
always found the sentries either asleep, or playing at cards with their
companion (the sentries being double), both having left their arms at the
place where they were posted.
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