Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/22

32 and persecute the poor stranger from street to street, from lane to lane, with a pertinacious importunity that makes him feel unhappy and quite depressed. For if all this want and suffering be real—and so it seems to be—then it is terrible, and places an individual person in a state of despair. One might in an hour's time give till one reduced one's self to want, without having, after all effectually helped a single one of this swarm of beggars. One cannot be at peace for a moment, and whilst you are pursued by half a dozen, or a whole dozen of people, who exhibit or describe their misery, you are met by a masked figure, a man clothed in black, from head to foot, remarkably like the dead—with this difference merely, that eyes gleam dismally through the eye-holes of the black leather mask—who audaciously, although silently, stretches out towards you, a black jingling netted bag, on which is written per gli infirmi, whilst on the right hand, and on the left, are shrieked into your ear promises of prayers to the Madonna, for prospects for you in paradise. All this has very little that is paradisiacal about it, and excites the greatest desire to flee away from such a purgatory of wretchedness and beggary.

Happy they who have no necessity to live here on account of the mild winter air! Mild it is certainly, but mild as unsalted water-gruel; and for my part, I would rather be ill, than in health amongst this population of beggars. It is legion in comparison with the few well-dressed people, who are to be seen in the streets. The city itself, has a sickly, dying or dead appearance. It is in fact, merely the corpse of the