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Charles Dickens - Pictures from Italy
houses, battered down their doors and windows, and made breaches in their roofs. In one part, a great
tower rose into the air; the only landmark in the melancholy view. In another, a prodigious castle, with a
moat about it, stood aloof: a sullen city in itself. In the black dungeons of this castle, Parisina and her
lover were beheaded in the dead of night. The red light, beginning to shine when I looked back upon it,
stained its walls without, as they have, many a time, been stained within, in old days; but for any sign of
life they gave, the castle and the city might have been avoided by all human creatures, from the moment
when the axe went down upon the last of the two lovers: and might have never vibrated to another sound
Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock.
Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of
boats, and so came into the Austrian territory, and resumed our journey: through a country of which, for
some miles, a great part was under water. The brave Courier and the soldiery had first quarrelled, for
half an hour or more, over our eternal passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the Brave, who was
always stricken deaf when shabby functionaries in uniform came, as they constantly did come, plunging
out of wooden boxes to look at it - or in other words to beg - and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that
the man might have a trifle given him, and we resume our journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the
functionary in broken English: while the unfortunate man's face was a portrait of mental agony framed in
the coach window, from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to his disparagement.
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
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