Volume 2: To Paris and Prison · Episode 6: Paris
Chapter V
I Stop at Ferrara, Where I Have a Comic Adventure— My Arrival in Paris
Precisely at twelve o’clock the peotta landed me at Ponte di Lago Oscuro, and I immediately took a post-chaise to reach Ferrara in time for dinner. I put up at St. Mark’s Hotel. I was following the waiter up the stairs, when a joyful uproar, which suddenly burst from a room the door of which was open, made me curious to ascertain the cause of so much mirth. I peeped into the room, and saw some twelve persons, men and women, seated round a well-supplied table. It was a very natural thing, and I was moving on, when I was stopped by the exclamation, “Ah, here he is!” uttered by the pretty voice of a woman, and at the same moment, the speaker, leaving the table, came to me with open arms and embraced me, saying,
“Quick, quick, a seat for him near me; take his luggage to his room.”
A young man came up, and she said to him, “Well, I told you he would arrive to-day?”
She made me sit near her at the table, after I had been saluted by all the guests who had risen to do me honour.
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