The rest of the company prepared to leave, wishing each other a pleasant journey. The Dane took the diligence and the Tsigane an omnibus. The Italians went on foot. The German found it economical to glide into the vehicle of the propriétaire, in the midst of tomatoes and fruits.
"We will go together," said the Jew to the Pole. "I do not wish to part with you. I have a carriage, and if you will not come willingly I shall employ force."
"But I have no right to trouble you."
"On the contrary, you will do me a service. Solitude fatigues me, and your company will distract my thoughts. It is a genuine favour that you will grant me. Come, no more doubts. Give me your hand, brother, and think no more about it."
From the threshold of the inn the landlord saw the departure of the invalid with great satisfaction. And his joy was augmented by the fact that all had paid well, and that his first care now was to prepare a second dinner.
"What good luck," said he to himself, "that that young stranger should have fallen into the hands of those people. If it had not been so he might perhaps have committed suicide here, and I should have been obliged to bury him at my own expense, for he did not appear to have a heavy haversack, and I do not believe he had a sou. May God deliver me from any more such tourists! Yes, I have had a lucky escape."
CHAPTER II.
[JUDAISM AND POLAND.]
The two men traversed in almost uninterrupted silence the short distance which separated Sestri from Genoa. The route is simply a continuous line of straggling hamlets. On one mass of rock arose the ruins of an old tower; above the door was the image of the Virgin, patroness of the city. The light-house appeared in the distance, then the harbour, like an amphitheatre around which Genoa la Superba is built. This beautiful city is seen to best advantage from the sea. It is a city of palaces, with its colonnades, its porticos and staircases, its streets climbing toward the sky or sinking in sudden precipices. It has been likened to an enormous shell thrown up by the waves of the sea. The marine monster who lived in this shell has been replaced by a miserable spider; a life full of littleness has succeeded the life of grandeur of past ages.
In this marble city the inhabitants to-day are somewhat embarrassed. The shell is too large for them,--this shell, in the bottom of which the turbulent Genoese Republic vied with Venice in its traffic and its aristocracy. New peoples are there, new ways. The Balbi and Palaviccini palaces now have the appearance of tombs, while at the port the modern Italian struggles for precedence in a new form of existence, perhaps as full of pride as in the vanished past.