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She and Miss Lavish had had an adventure also. They had been stopped at the Dazio coming back, and the young officials there, who seemed impudent and desoeuvre, had tried to search their reticules for provisions. It might have been most unpleasant. Fortunately Miss Lavish was a match for any one. For good or for evil, Lucy was left to face her problem alone.
Too plainly it means nothing but the exhaustion of her people in the service of a base ideal. The confines of this new town being so vague, much trouble is given to that noble institution, the dazio. Scattered far and wide in a dusty wilderness, stand the little huts of the officers, vigilant on every road or by-way to wring the wretched soldi from toilsome hands.
Of course the whole dazio business is ludicrous and contemptible; I scarce know a baser spectacle than that of uniformed officials groping in the poor little bundles of starved peasant women, mauling a handful of onions, or prodding with long irons a cartload of straw. Did any one ever compare the expenses with the results? A glance shows the situation of Cosenza.
Almost everything which the country produces, whether for man or for beast, on entering the city has to pay duty at the gate. This is termed Dazio di Consumo. This department of the revenue is farmed out to an officer, whose servants are stationed at the gates for the purpose of uplifting the duty; and there, as in all the other Government custom-houses, much systematic cheating goes on.
John could be interrupted, would come running lightly downstairs, with both hands out to greet the visitor; would show the pictures, eagerly demonstrating the beauties of the last new Turners, "Ehrenbreitstein" and "Lucerne," just acquired, and anticipating the sunset glories and mountain gloom of the "Goldau" and "Dazio Grande," which the great artist was "realizing" for him from sketches he had chosen at Queen Anne Street.
Shelley in a most graphic and picturesque letter by one of her son's companions. They were nearly drowned while crossing the lake in the diligence on a raft, during a violent storm. Next they were informed that the road of the Dazio Grande to Airolo was washed away sixty feet under the present torrent.
"How long a time shall we spend in Padua, Countess?" asked the Chauffeulier as we came within sight of a gateway, some domes and campanili. "Oh, don't let's make up our mind till we get there," replied Aunt Kathryn comfortably. "But we are there," said he. "In another minute the little men of the dazio will be tapping our bags as a doctor taps his patient's lungs." Padua!
I could remember nothing but fine Italian oaths, and these he doubtless took to mean that I wished him to win. And win we did by a neck as we came to the dazio consume, the octroi post outside Formia. And below me I saw Formia's lights, at the foot of the hill, and the Bay of Gaeta stretched out before me. That night I slept in a little Italian inn by the verge of the quiet sea.
But, with a pardonable desire not to seem helpless in his hands, I had from the first directed him to the Due Lionetti, relying upon my guide-book. Even at Cosenza there is progress, and guide-books to little-known parts of Europe are easily allowed to fall out of date. On my arrival But, first of all, the dazio.
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