lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius expedition. There was to be eight

of us in the party, and we were to leave Naples at midnight. We laid in

some provisions for the trip, engaged carriages to take us to

Annunciation, and then moved about the city, to keep awake, till twelve.

We got away punctually, and in the course of an hour and a half arrived

at the town of Annunciation. Annunciation is the very last place under

the sun. In other towns in Italy the people lie around quietly and wait

for you to ask them a question or do some overt act that can be charged

for--but in Annunciation they have lost even that fragment of delicacy;

they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand it to her and charge a

penny; they open a carriage door, and charge for it--shut it when you get

out, and charge for it; they help you to take off a duster--two cents;

brush your clothes and make them worse than they were before--two cents;

smile upon you--two cents; bow, with a lick-spittle smirk, hat in hand

--two cents; they volunteer all information, such as that the mules will

arrive presently--two cents--warm day, sir--two cents--take you four

hours to make the ascent--two cents. And so they go. They crowd you

--infest you--swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look

sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office too degrading for

them to perform, for money. I have had no opportunity to find out any

thing about the upper classes by my own observation, but from what I hear

said about them I judge that what they lack in one or two of the bad

traits the canaille have, they make up in one or two others that are

worse. How the people beg!--many of them very well dressed, too.

I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal observation.

353

The Innocents Abroad