Between the soldier and the robber, in fact, the difference was merely that of official, and unofficial, employment. It was in the latter capacity, of course, that they oftenest had dealings with the tourist; or were supposed to do so. One cannot help being struck by the idea that these travellers were far more frightened than hurt, so far as robbery was concerned. A lady, for instance, between Turin and Genoa, saw the road stained with blood where wayfarers had lately been robbed and murdered, yet passed in safety.[146] One traveller, it is true, was stopped four times between St. Malo and Havre, but more normal experiences were those of Moryson, who suffered so but once in more than four years' travel, and of Hentzner, who encountered robbers once in three years and then escaped. He had warning and hired an escort; but it has to be noted that this escort, for one day, cost more than fifty crowns [£90]. Very similar was the experience of the Venetian ambassador Lippomano on his way to Paris in 1577.[147] A rumour got about that he was conveying a loan of eight hundred thousand francs to the French government, and a Venetian ambassador was easy to get information about because of the red trappings of his mules. He was warned, and so were the towns on the route; with the result that his own company were refused admission on suspicion that they were the highwaymen in disguise; and watched, as they passed, by garrisons on the walls. For six days they marched in continual fear; swords drawn, arquebus-matches lighted. Once they thought the "volori" really were upon them, but out of the cloud of dust galloped nothing but the escort from Troyes to relieve the escort from Bar-sur-Seine. And in the end they were fleeced by none but the escorts themselves.
These escorts were part of the life of the time; important towns kept them as a matter of course, in default of a system of country-police such as existed in Spain, the "Santa Hermandad," who first suppressed the thieves and then took over, and extended, their business. In France, however, towards the end of this period, the highways began to be patrolled regularly by police, in couples, none but whom might carry firearms. Yet this arrangement was in force when of the travellers who followed just behind Evelyn on the Paris-Orleans road, four were killed. And within a few years of this some one tells us how he heard cries issuing from the inside of a dead horse, cut open by robbers in order to give themselves more time to escape by fastening their victim inside it, a dirty trick, literally, for he was pulled out in as untidy a state as it was possible for a stark-naked man to be.
TRAVELLERS ATTACKED BY ROBBERS
To meet, when alone, with two ruffians, to pretend, being on foot and decidedly shabby, to be a beggar; and to pass them thus, not only without loss, but with 1s. 2d. towards his next meal—such was the experience of one Englishman abroad. But what could he have done had the beasts been four-legged ones? Here was another risk to run; and, perhaps, to pay for. There were plenty to meet. It is not surprising to read of them breaking into stables and ransacking cemeteries in Muscovy, where, by the way, protection against them was supposed to be secured by the noise of a big stick dragging at the back of the sledge by a rope; but things were little better near Paris. Readers of Rabelais may recollect a second narrow escape that befell the six pilgrims whom Gargantua ate in a salad in consequence of their hiding among the lettuces to avoid being eaten by him as meat. After their miraculous escape out of his mouth, they barely saved themselves from falling into a snare for wolves. It was no exaggeration to write so about Touraine; in the winter of 1653 a pack entered Blois and ate a child. And just before Evelyn visited Fontainebleau, "a lynx or ounce" had killed some one passing thither by the highroad from Paris. The country between Geneva and Lyons, again, writes one who passed through it, was "mainly inhabited by wolves and bears."
"WOLVES"