This was a bad outlook.

We must take these things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them in the custom-house might lose us our train.

I imagined all sorts of terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian frontier.

We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed.
We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering at once.

It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to give it all up and go away and leave the baggage.