Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/98

78 was the "excellency," the vehicle was the "carnage," and the Hotel de Londres was the "palace." All the grandiloquence of the nation was embodied in the phrase.

Franz and Albert descended; the carnage approached the palace; their excellencies stretched their legs along the seats; the cicerone sprang into the seat behind.

"Where do your excellencies wish to go?" asked he.

"To Saint Peter's first, and then to the Colosseum," returned Albert. But Albert did not know that it takes a day to see Saint Peter's, and a month to study it. The day was passed at Saint Peter's alone.

Suddenly the daylight began to fade away; Franz took out his watch it was half-past four. They returned to the hotel; at the door Franz ordered the coachman to be ready at eight. He wished to show Albert the Colosseum by moonlight, as he had shown him St. Peter's by daylight. When we show a friend a city one has already visited, we feel the same pride as when we point out a woman whose lover we have been.

He was to leave the city by the Porta del Popolo, skirt the outer wall, and reenter by the Porta San Giovanni; thus they would behold the Colosseum without being in some measure prepared by the sight of the Capitol, the Forum, the Arch of Septimus Severus, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and the Via Sacra.

They sat down to dinner. Maitre Pastrini had promised them a banquet; he gave them a tolerable repast. At the end of the dinner he entered in person. Franz concluded he came to hear his dinner praised, and began accordingly, but at the first words he interrupted him.

"Excellency," said he, "I am delighted to have your approbation, but it was not for that I came."

"Did you come to tell us you have procured a carriage?" asked Albert, lighting his cigar.

"No; and your excellencies will do well not to think of that any longer. At Rome things can or can not be done; when you are told any thing can not be done, there is an end of it."

"It is much more convenient at Paris, when anything cannot be done, you pay double, and it is done directly."

"That is what all the French say," returned Maitre Pastrini, some what piqued; "for that reason, I do not understand why they travel."

"But," said Albert, emitting a volume of smoke and balancing his chair on its hind legs, "only madmen or blockheads, like we are, travel. Men in their senses do not quit their hotel in the Rue du Helder, their walk on the Boulevard de Gand, and the Cafe de Paris."

It is, of course, understood that Albert resided in the aforesaid rue, appeared every day on the fashionable walk, and dined frequently at