It was not dangerous, and
the whole affair ended so. Besides, as I learned, still longer
afterward, when it was quite safe for a cabman from the same stand to
speak, the combatants were not Romans, but peasants from the Campagna,
who had come in with their market-carts and had become heated with the
bad spirits which the peasants have the habit of drinking five or six
glasses of when they visit Rome. "What we call benzine," my cabman
explained. "We Romans," he added from a moral height, "drink only a
glass or two of wine, and we never carry knives."
He may have been right concerning the peacefulness of the Romans and
their sobriety, and I am bound to say that I never saw any other violent
scene during my stay. Sometimes I heard loud quarrelling among our
cabmen, and sometimes I was the subject of it, when one driver snatched
me, an impartial prey, from another. But the bad feeling, if there was
really any, quickly passed, and some other day I fell to the cabman who
had been wronged of me.
Pages:
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261