We did not know, when we started from home in Venice, on the 8th of
November, 1864, that we had taken the longest road to Rome. We thought
that of all the proverbial paths to the Eternal City that leading to
Padua, and thence through Ferrara and Bologna to Florence, and so
down the sea-shore from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, was the best, the
briefest, and the cheapest. Who could have dreamed that this path,
so wisely and carefully chosen, would lead us to Genoa, conduct us on
shipboard, toss us four dizzy days and nights, and set us down, void,
battered, and bewildered, in Naples? Luckily,
"The moving accident is not my trade,"
for there are events of this journey (now happily at an end) which,
if I recounted them with unsparing sincerity, would forever deter the
reader from taking any road to Rome.
Though, indeed, what is Rome, after all, when you come to it?