and found the king had only stopped there an hour, and then pursued his journey to Naples. Down to Naples went Mr. Joel at once, but to his intense astonishment, nobody there had heard a word of the king's arrival. They did not, indeed, allege the thing was impossible; but they slily insinuated that, if his majesty had really come, and had not thought proper to make his arrival matter of notoriety, they, as Italians, Neapolitans surtout, knew good manners better than to interfere with a retirement it was their duty to respect. This they said with a sort of half-droll significancy that puzzled Mr. Joel much, for he had lived little in Italy, and knew far more about Cremorne than the Casino! Little dubious sentences, shallow insinuations, half-laughing obscurities, were not weapons to repel such a man as Joel. His mind was too steadfastly intent on its object to be deterred by such petty opposition. He had come to see the king, and see him he would. This same speech he made so frequently, so publicly, and so energetically, that at the various cafés which he frequented, no sooner was he seen to enter than some stranger to him-all were strangers-would usually come up in the most polite manner, and express a courteous hope that he had been successful, and had either dined with his majesty or passed the evening with him. It is needless to say that the general impression was that poor Mr. Joel was a lunatic, but as his form of the malady seemed mild and inoffensive, his case was one entirely for compassion and pity. A few, however, took a different view. They were of the police, and consequently they regarded the incident professionally. To their eyes, Joel was a Mazzinian, and came out specially to assassinate the king. It is such an obvious thing to the official mind that a man on such an errand would attract every notice to his intentions beforehand, that they not alone decided Joel to be an intended murderer, but, they kept a strict record of all the people he accidentally addressed, all the waiters who served, and all the hackney cabmen who drove him, while the telegraphic wires of the whole kingdom vibrated with one name, asking, Who is Joel? trace Joel; send some one to identify Joel. Little poor Joel knew all this time that he had been photographed as he sat eating his oysters, and that scraps of his letters were pasted on a large piece of pasteboard in the Ministry of Police, that his handwriting might be shown under his varied attempts to disguise it. One evening he sat much later than was his wont at a little open-air café of the St. Lucia quarter. The sky was gloriously starlit, and the air had all the balmy softness of the delicious south. Joel would have enjoyed it and the cool drink before him intensely, if it were not that his disappointed hopes threw a dark shadow over everything, and led him to think of all that his journey had cost him in cash, and all in the foregone opportunities of discounts and usuries. A frequenter of the café, with whom he had occasionally exchanged greetings, sat at the same table; but they said little to each other, the stranger being evidently one not given to much converse, and rather disposed to the indulgence of his own thoughts in silence. "Is it not strange," said Joel, after a long pause, "that I must go back without seeing him?' A half-impatient grunt was all the reply, for the stranger was well weary of Joel and his sorrows. "One would suppose that he really wanted to keep out of my way, for up to this moment no one can tell me if he be here or not." Another grunt. "It is not that I have left anything undone, Heaven knows. There isn't a quarter of the town I have not walked, day and night, and his is not a face to be mistaken; I'd know him at a glance." "And what in the devil's name do you want with him when you have seen him?" exclaimed the other, angrily. "Do you imagine that a king of Italy has nothing better to do with his time than grant audiences to every idle John Bull whose debts or doctors have sent him over the Alps?" This rude speech was so fiercely delivered, and with a look and tone so palpably provocative, that Joel at once perceived his friend intended to draw him into a quarrel, so he finished off his liquor, took up his hat and cane, and with a polite felice sera, Signor, was about to withdraw. "Excuse me," said the stranger, rising, with a manner at once obsequious and apologetic. "I entreat you to forgive my rude and impatient speech. I was thinking of something else, and forgot myself. Sit down for one moment, and I will try and make you a proper reparation-a reparation you will be satisfied with. You want to see the king, and you desire to speak with him: both can be done with a little courage; and when I say this, I mean rather presence of mind-aplomb, as the French say than anything like intrepidity or daring. Do you possess the quality I speak of?" "It is my precise gift-the essential fea- | jacket all covered with little buttons, leather ture of my character," cried Joel, in ecstasy. "This, then, is the way-and mind I tell you this secret on the faith that as an English gentleman you preserve it inviolate-parole Inglese,' is a proverb with us, and we have reason to believe that it deserves its signification." Joel swore to observe the bond, and the other continued small-clothes ending above the knees, which were naked, light gaiters half-way up the leg, his gun slung at his back, pistols in his belt, and a couteau-de-chasse without a scabbard hung by a string to his waist-belt; he added that he spoke little, and that little in a strange dialect, probably Roman or from the Marches. "By a few other traits he established the identity of one whose real rank and condition he never had the slightest suspicion of. Now, as the king is still there, and as he told the Paroco of the little village at Catanzaro that he'd send him some game for his Sunday dinner, which he meant to partake of with him, you have only to set out to-night, reach Nola, where, with the aid of a pony and a carratella, you will make your way to Raniglia, after which, three miles of a brisk mountain walk "The king, it is needless to tell you, detests state and ceremonial: he abhors courtly etiquette, and the life of a palace is to him the slavery of the galleys. His real pleasure is the society of a few intimates, whom he treats as equals, and with whom he discourses in the rough dialect of Piedmont, as it is talked in the camp by his soldiers. Even this amount of liberty is, however, sometimes not sufficient for this bold native spirit; he longs for more freedom-for, in fact, that utter absence of all deference, all recognition of his high estate, which followers never can forget; and to arrive at this, he now and then steals out at night and gains the mountains, where, with a couple of dogs and a rifle, he will pass two, three, perhaps four days, sharing the peasant's fare and his couch, eating the coarsest food, and sleeping on straw, with a zest that shows what-how, while carefully avoiding all signs of a veritable type of the medieval baron this Count of Savoy really is, and by what a mistake it is that he belongs to an age where the romance of such a character is an anachronism! "You may feel well astonished that nobody could tell you where he is-whether here or at Turin, at Bologna, at Florence, or Palermo. The fact is, they don't know; that's the real truth-not one of them knows; all they are aware of is that he is off-away on one of those escapades on which it would be as much as life is worth to follow him; and there is La Marmora, and there sits Minghetti, and yonder Della Rovere, not daring to hint a syllable as to the king's absence, nor even to hazard a guess above a whisper as to when he will come back again. Now I can tell you where he is a mere accident put me in possession of the secret. A fattore of my brother's came up yesterday from the Terri di Lavoro, and told how a strange man, large, strong-boned, and none over bland-looking, had been quail-shooting over the Podere for the last two days; he said he was a wonderful shot, but cared nothing about his game, which he gave freely away to any one he met. I made him describe him accurately, and he told me how he wore a tall high-crowned hat-a calabrese,'-as they call it-with a short peacock's feather, a brown nothing to an Englishman-you'll arrive at Catanzaro, where there is a little inn. He calls there every evening, coming down the valley from St. Agata, and if you would like to meet him casually, as it were, you have only to set out a little before sunset, and stroll up the gorge; there you'll find him." The stranger went on to instruct Mr. Joel how, he should behave to the distinguished unknown recognition, he should never forget that he was in the presence of one accustomed to the most deferential respect. "Your manner, said he, "must be an artful blending of easy politeness with a watchful caution against over-familiarity; in fact, try to make him believe that you never suspect his great rank, and at the same time take care that in your own heart you never forget it. Not a very easy thing to do, but the strong will that has sent you so far, will doubtless supply the way to help you further;" and with a few more such friendly counsels he wished Joel success and a good-night, and departed. Mr. Joel took his place in the "rotondo" of the diligence-no other was vacant-and set off that night in company with two priests, a gendarme, and a captured galley-slave, who was about to show the officers of justice where a companion of his flight had sought concealment. The company ate and drank, smoked villanous tobacco, and sang songs all night, so that when Joel reached Nola he was so overcome with fatigue, headache, and sickness, that he had to take to bed, where the doctor who was sent for bled him twice, and would have done so four or five times more, if the patient, resisting with the little strength left him, had not put him out of the room and ! locked the door, only opening it to creep down stairs and escape from Nola for ever. He man aged with some difficulty to get a place in a baroccino to Raniglia, and made the journey surrounded with empty wine-flasks, which required extreme care and a very leisurely pace, so that the distance, which was but eighteen miles, occupied nearly as many hours. It took him a full day to recruit at Raniglia, all the more since the rest of the journey must be made on foot. "I own, sir," said Mr. Joel, whom I now leave to speak for himself, "it was with a heavy heart I arose that morning and thought of what was before me. I had already gone through much fatigue and considerable illness, and I felt that if any mishap should befall me in that wild region, with its wild-looking, semi-savage inhabitants, the world would never hear more of me. It was a sad way to finish a life which had not been altogether unsuccessful, and I believe I shed tears as I fastened on my knapsack and prepared for the road. A pedlar kept me company for two miles, and I tried to induce him to go on the whole way with me to Catanzaro, but he pointed to his pack, and said, 'There are folk up there who help themselves too readily to such wares as I carry. I'd rather visit Catanzaro with an empty pack than a full one.' He was curious to learn what led me to visit the place, and I told him it was to see the fine mountain scenery and the great chestnut and cork woods of which I had heard so much. He only shook his head in reply. I don't know whether he disbelieved me, or whether he meant that the journey would scarce repay the fatigue. I arrived at Catanzaro about three in the afternoon. It was a blazing hot day-the very air seemed to sparkle with the fiery sun's rays, and the village, in regular Italian fashion, was on the very summit of a mountain, around which other mountains of far greater height were grouped in a circle. Every house was shut up, the whole population was in bed, and I had as much difficulty in getting admission to the inn as if I had come at midnight." I will not trouble my reader to follow Mr. Joel in his description of or comment upon Italian village life, nor ask him to listen to the somewhat lengthy dialogue that took place between him and the priest, a certain Don Lertoro, a most miserable, half-famished fellow, with the worst countenance imaginable, and a vein of ribaldry in his talk that, Mr. Joel declared, the most degraded creature might have been ashamed of. By an artful turn of the conversation, Joel led the priest to talk of the strangers who occasionally came up to visit the mountain, and at last made bold to ask, as though he had actually seen him, who was the large, strongboned man, with a rifle slung behind him? he did not look like a native of these parts. Where did you meet him?" asked the priest with a furtive look. "About a mile from this," said Joel; "he was standing on the rock over the bridge as I crossed the torrent." "Che Bestia!" muttered Don Lertoro, angrily; but whether the compliment was meant for Joel or the unknown did not appear. Unwilling to resume the theme, however, he affected to busy himself about getting some salad for supper, and left Joel to himself. While Joel sat ruminating, in part pleasantly, over the craft of his own address, and in part dubiously, thinking over Don Lertoro's exclamation, and wondering if the holy man really knew who the stranger was, the priest returned to announce the supper. was, By Joel's account, a great game of fence followed the meal, each pushing the other home with very searching inquiries, but Joel candidly declaring that the Don, shrewd as he had no chance with him, insomuch as that, while he completely baffled the other as to what led him there, how long he should remain, and where go to afterwards, he himself ascertained that the large, heavy-boned man with the rifle might usually be met every evening about sunset in the gorge coming down from St. Agata; in fact, there was a little fountain about three miles up the valley which was a favourite spot of his to eat his supper at--"a spot easily found," said the priest, "for there are four cypress-trees at it, and on the rock overhead you'll see a wooden cross, where a man was murdered once." This scarcely seemed to Joel's mind as a very appetizing element; but he said nothing, and went his way. As the day was drawing to a close, Mr. Joel set out for the fountain. The road, very beautiful and picturesque as it was, was eminently lonely. After leaving the village he never saw a human being; and though the evening was deliciously fine, and the wild flowers at either side scented the air, and a clear rivulet ran along the roadside with a pleasant murmur, there was that in the solitude and the silence, and the tall peaked mountains, lone and grim, that terrified and appalled him. Twice was he so overcome that he almost determined to turn back and abandon the expedition. Onward, however, he went, encouraging "Scioccone!" cried the stranger; but whether himself by many little flatteries and compliments to his own nature. How bold he was? how original! how unlike other money-lenders! what manifest greatness there must be somewhere in the temperament of one like him, who could thus leave home and country, security, and the watchful supervision of Scotland Yard, to come into the wild mountains of Calabria, just to gratify an intellectual craving! These thoughts carried him over miles of the way, and at last he came in sight of the four cypress-trees; and as he drew nigh, sure enough there was the little wooden cross standing out against the sky; and while he stopped to look at it, a loud voice, so loud as to make him start, shouted out, "Alto làwho are you?" the epithet was meant for Joel or the cure did not appear. A very long and close cross-examination ensued, in which Joel was obliged not merely to explain who he was, whence he came, and what he came for, but to narrate a variety of personal circumstances which at the time it seemed strange his majesty would care to listen to—such as the amount of money he had with him, how much more he had left behind at Naples, how he had no friends in that capital, nor any one like to interest themselves about him if he should get into trouble, or require to be assisted in any way. Apparently the king was satisfied with all his replies, for he finished by inviting him to partake of some supper with him; and, producing a small basket from under the brushwood, he drew forth a couple of fowls, some cheese, and a flask of wine. It was not till he had drunk up three large goblets of the wine that Joel found himself sufficiently courageous to be happy. At last, however, he grew easy, and even familiar, questioning his majesty about the sort of life he led, and asking how it was that he never fell into the hands of brigands. Mr. Joel looked about him on every side, but no one was to be seen. He crossed the road, and came back again, and for a moment he seemed to doubt whether it was not some trick of his own imagination suggested the cry, when it was repeated still louder; and now his eyes caught sight of a tall, high-crowned hat, rising above the rank grass, on a cliff over the road, the wearer being evidently lying Nothing could be more genial or gooddown on the sward. Joel had but time to humoured than the king; he was frankness remove his hat courteously, when the figure itself; he owned that his life might possibly sprang to his feet, and revealed the person of be better; that on the whole, his father conan immense man. He looked gigantic on the fessor was obliged to bear a good deal from spot he stood on, and with his stern, flushed him; and that all his actions were not in features, and enormous mustaches, turned strictest conformity with church discipline. fiercely upwards at the points, recalled to Mr. You ought to marry again; I am perJoel the well-known print over his chimney-suaded, sir," said Joel, "it would be the best piece at home. "Where are you going?" cried thing you could do." he, sternly. "I don't know," said the other, thought"Nowhere in particular, sir. Strolling to fully. "I have a matter of seven wives as it enjoy my cigar," replied Joel, trembling. is, and I don't want any more." "Wait a moment," said the other, and came clattering down the cliff; his rifle, his pistols, and his ammunition pouches making a terrific uproar as he came. "You came from Catanzaro-were there any gendarmes there when you left?" "None, sire: not one," said Joel, who was so overcome by the dignity of the gentleman that he forgot all his intended reserve. "No lies, no treachery, or, by the precious tears of the Madonna, I'll blow your brains out." "Your majesty may believe every word I utter in the length and breadth of the Peninsula; you have not a more devoted worshipper." "Did you see the priest Don Lertoro?" Yes, sire; it was he told me where I should find your majesty, at the well, here, under the cypress-trees." "Ah! your majesty, I guess what you mean, said Joel, winking; "but that's not what I would suggest. I mean some strong political connection-some alliance with a royal house, Russian or Bavarian, if, indeed, Austrian were not possible." "On the whole," said Joel, "I found that he didn't much trust any one; he thought ill of Louis Napoleon, and called him some hard names; he was not over-complimentary to the Pope; and as for Garibaldi, he said they had once been thick as thieves, but of late they had seen little of each other, and, for his part, he was not sorry for it. All this time, sir," continued Joel, "his majesty was always fancying something or other that I wore or carried about me; first it was my watch, which I felt much honoured by his deigning to accept; then it was my shirt-studs, then my wrist buttons, then my tobacco-pouch, then my pipe, a very fine meerschaum, and at last, to my intense astonishment, my purse, whose contents he actually emptied on the table, and counted out before me, asking me if I had not any more about me, either in notes or bills, for it seemed a small sum for a 'Milordo,' so he called me, to travel with. "Whatever I had, however, he took ittook every carlino of it-saying, 'There's no getting any change up here-there are no bankers, my dear Signor Joel; but we'll meet at Naples one of these days, and set all these things to rights." "I suppose the wine must have been far stronger than I thought; perhaps, too, drinking it in the open air made it more heady; then the novelty of the situation had its effect -it's not every day that a man sits hob-nobbing with a king. Whatever the reason, I became confused and addled, and my mind wandered. I forgot where I was. I believe I sang something-I am not sure what-and the king sang, and then we both sang together; and at last he whistled with a silver callwhistle that he wore, and he gave me in charge to a fellow-a ragged rascally-looking dog he was to take me back to Catanzaro; and the scoundrel, instead of doing so, led me off through the mountains for a day and a half, and dropped me at last at Reccone, a miserable village, without tasting food for twelve hours. He made me change clothes with him, too, and take his dirty rags, this goat-skin vest and the rest of it, instead of my new tweed suit; and then, sir, as we parted, he clapped me familiarly on the shoulder, and said, 'Mind me, amico mio, you're not to tell the padrone, when you see him, that I took your clothes from you, or he'll put a bullet through me. Mind that, or you'll have to settle your scores with one of my brothers.' 666 By the padrone you perhaps mean the king,' said I, haughtily. "King, if you like,' said he, grinning; 'we call him Ninco Nanco:' and now that they've shot Pilone, and taken Stoppa, there's not another brigand in the whole of Italy to compare with him.' Yes, sir, out came the horrid truth. It was Ninco Nanco, the greatest monster in the Abruzzi, I had mistaken for Victor Emmanuel. It was to him I had presented my watch, my photograph, my sealring, and my purse with forty-two napoleons. Dirty, ragged, wretched, in tatters, and famished, I crept on from village to village till I reached this place yesterday evening, only beseeching leave to be let lie down and die, for I II. By disputing I will never, To convince you, once endeavour. I will never contradict you. V. When your speeches are absurd, VI. When you, furious, argue wrong, Will I ever tell before ye: VIII. Never more will I suppose You can taste my verse or prose. IX. You no more at me shall fret, While I teach and you forget. X. You shall never hear me thunder When blunder you on, and blunder. XI. Show your poverty of spirit, XII. Never will I give advice Till you please to ask me thrice: |