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Updated: May 18, 2025
The delight of one of our first journeys over the road between Padua and Ferrara was a Roman cameriere out of place, who got into the diligence at Ponte Lagoscuro. The last was worth all the rest being a man of vast general information acquired in the course of service with families of all nations, and agreeably communicative.
He first appeared to us on the driver's seat of that carriage in which we posted so splendidly one spring-time from Padua to Ponte Lagoscuro. But though he mounted to his place just outside the city gate, we did not regard him much, nor, indeed, observe what a mouse he was, until the driver stopped to water his horses near Battaglia, and the Mouse got down to stretch his forlorn little legs.
At Padua we take a carriage for Ponte Lagoscuro, and having fought the customary battle with the vetturino before arriving at the terms of contract; having submitted to the successive pillage of the man who had held our horses a moment, of the man who tied on the trunk, and of the man who hovered obligingly about the carriage, and desired to drink our health with prodigious smacking of whip, and banging of wheels, we rattle out of the Stella d'Oro, and set forth from the gate of the old city.
The current of the Po, spreading over the whole space between its widely separated embankments, takes up so much water in its inundations, that, while a little below the outlet of the Ticino the discharge of the channel is sometimes not less than 19,500 cubic yards to the second, it has never exceeded 6,730 yards at Ponte Lagoscuro, near Ferrara.
Light and short as my constraint had been, it was sufficient to make me feel what a magic influence is in liberty. I could again go whither I would; and the poor village of Ponte Lagoscuro, and even the faces of the two officials, assumed a kindlier aspect.
I have to thank the papal police at Ponte Lagoscuro for the opportunity of seeing Ferrara; for, with the bad taste which most travellers in Italy display on this head, I had overlooked this town, and booked myself right through to Bologna. I lodged at a fine old hotel, whose spacious apartments left me in no doubt that it had once belonged to some of the princely families of Ferrara.
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