Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/183

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AMONG THE PALACES.
163

always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who handed us a programme, pointed to the picture that began the list of the salon he was in, and then stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his petrified livery till we were ready to move on
PETRIFIED LACKEY.
to the next chamber, whereupon he marched sadly ahead and took up another malignantly respectful position as before. I wasted so much time praying that the roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkeys that I had but little left to bestow upon palace and pictures.

And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside himself could talk the language at al. He showed us the birthplace of Christopher Columbus,