"Large as Rome, of course, they could not be"; then, after a moment, he added, interrogatively, "And rivers, too,—have you any rivers?"
"A few," I answered.
"But not as large as our Tiber," he replied,—feeling assured, that, if the cities were smaller than Rome, as a necessary consequence, the rivers that flowed by them must be in the same category.
The bait now offered was too tempting. I measured my respectable and somewhat obese friend carefully with my eye, for a moment, and then hurled this terrible fact at him:—
"We have some rivers three thousand miles long."
The effect was awful. He stood and stared at me, as if petrified, for a moment. Then the blood rushed into his face, and, turning on his heel, he took off his hat, said suddenly, "Buona sera," and carried my fact and his opinions together up into his private room. I am afraid that Don Pietro decided, on consideration, that I had been taking unwarrantable liberties with him, and exceeding all proper bounds, in my attempt to impose on his good-nature. From that time forward he asked me no more questions about America.
And here, by the way, I am reminded of an incident, which, though not exactly pertinent, may find here a parenthetical place, merely as illustrating some points of Italian character. One fact and two names relating to America they know universally,—Columbus and his discovery of America, and Washington.
"Sì, Signore," said a respectable person some time since, as he was driving me to see a carriage which he wished to sell me, and therefore desired to be particularly polite to me and my nation,—"a great man, your Vashintoni! but I was sorry to hear, the other day, that his father had died in London."
"His father dead, and in London?" I stammered, completely confounded at this extraordinary news, and fearing lest I had been too stupid in misunderstanding him.
"Yes," he said, "it is too true that his father Vellintoni is dead. I read it in the Diario di Roma."