Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host, John Haggardorne, and Chapter 31 of the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.

And now, Italy, Sinbad the Sailor.

Towards the beginning of the year 1838,

two young men belonging to the First Society of Paris,

the Vicombe Albert de Morset, and the Baron Franz de Pénez,

were at Florence.

They had agreed to see the carnival at Rome that year, and that Franz, who for the last three or four years had inhabited Italy, should act as Ciceroon to Albert.

It is no inconsiderable affair to spend the carnival at Rome, especially when you have

no great desire to sleep on the

Piazza del Popolo, or the Campo Vassino. They wrote to Signor Pastrini, the proprietor of the

Hotel de Londres, Piazza di Spagna, to reserve comfortable apartments for them.

Signor Pastrini replied that he had only two rooms and a parlor on the third floor,

which he offered at the low charge of a Louis Perdium. They accepted his offer, but wishing to make

the best use of the time that was left, Albert started for Naples. As for Franz, he remained at

Florence, and after having passed a few days

in exploring the paradise of the Cassine, and spending two or three evenings at the houses of the

Florentine nobility, he took a fancy into his head, having already visited Corsica, the cradle of Bonaparte,

to visit Elba, the waiting place of Napoleon.

One evening he cast off the painter of a sailboat from the iron ring that secured it to the

dock at Leghorn, wrapped himself in his coat, and lay down, and said to the crew,

To the island of Elba. The boat shot out of the harbor like a bird,

...