“I sometimes wonder, my dear girl, whether you will quite easily take to the foreign ways of your intended husband.”

“Do you doubt it, Mary? I think, on the contrary, there is something so charming in that strange mixture of childlike simplicity and manly generosity which is so remarkable in the really good and noble Italians. Emidio always reminds me of a high-bred school-boy.”

“That is even more the characteristic, perhaps, of a thoroughly consistent Catholic life from childhood upwards than of any particular nation; though I agree with you that it is generally evident amongst Italians. Joy is the attribute of childhood, as distinct from any other period of life; and a joyful spirit is one of the marks of hidden sanctity. But I was not thinking of anything so serious as this. I mean that I wonder whether you will take easily to the out-of-door, unprivate life which is engendered amongst Italians by their beautiful climate, and which makes it not only a simple, but almost a necessary, thing that Don Emidio should immediately think of celebrating your engagement by dining at the celebrated Caffe Frisio.”

“I certainly wondered why he wished it, but I suppose it is the custom, and I am quite content.”

What a mischievous bird it was! When we came home, after leaving it at liberty in the house, we found all the heads of a bouquet of violets that stood in water picked off and strewed on the table, and all the pens taken from the pen-tray and laid on the floor. Finally one day the pins had been extracted out of the pin-cushion and put on the table, and the long, black hair-pins taken out of Mary's silver toilet-box and laid on the bed. At last we noticed a black pigeon that used to come often and sit on the water-pipe of the house opposite. We never closed the windows on account of our purple pigeon, as it had shown no disposition to leave its human friends for others of its own kind. But blood is stronger than water; and no doubt the black pigeon had wonderful tales to tell of the many roofs of Rome as presenting eligible habitations, and of the daily markets in the Piazza Navona and beneath the shadow of the Pantheon as affording an easily-obtained repast among the refuse. So one day, when we came home, the window was open, and the pigeon nowhere to be found. Nor did we ever again see the black seducer sitting on the neighboring water-spouts.

“The work accomplished, he returned to the half-ruined college at Potenza. There was but one other priest in residence with him there, and Padre Cataldo had hardly joined him when the revolution broke out. The Jesuits were far from apprehending any violence at first from the inhabitants of Potenza, a great many of whom were much attached to them. But at that time they had not had personal experience of the insidious ways by means of which the revolutionists instil their doctrines into the minds of the unsuspecting. They soon, however, began to notice that the caffes were thronged with noisier guests than usual, and who remained till late into the night discussing and disputing over their wine or coffee. The few shops where books or newspapers could be found in the not highly-educated or literary town of Potenza began to display pamphlets with brilliant-colored covers and dubious titles. The men frequenting the churches were fewer, and those that came were less respectful in their demeanor. At night the young men wandered about in file, arm-in-arm, walking rapidly with what no doubt they thought a military step, a flower stuck behind the ear, the hat on one side, and singing revolutionary songs in a loud and often inebriated voice. The symptoms were all bad. And the fathers were not surprised when one morning, having noticed an unusual agitation in the streets and the piazza, they received a secret message to the effect that they would do well to leave the town as quickly and as quietly as possible, for the one simple reason that where there is a Jesuit the revolutionist is his enemy. The persons sending this message to the fathers added that if their advice were not forthwith taken, acts of violence might follow.

“For many days he had to fly from place to place disguised as a layman, and with a false beard. But even so there was something in his whole appearance which betrayed him. One day he was walking along the street, swinging a walking-stick, when he heard one man say to another, as they passed him, ‘There goes a Jesuit in disguise.’

We sat silent for a few seconds at the end of Don Emidio's account. It seemed to bring the nature and qualities of revolution keenly before us when we thus heard of what it had done to one so well known and so beloved by us all. Ida was the first to speak; and she told us that not long after they had settled at Posilippo with Padre Cataldo, a gentleman had called to see him on some business, accompanied by a young man. Ida remarked that when the latter came into the room, as soon as his eyes fell on Padre Cataldo, he turned deadly pale. As he was only in attendance on the other gentleman, he sat a little back, and no one paid much attention to him, while she watched him. She saw he was greatly overcome and trembled very much. She tried to enter into conversation with him, but he seemed too absent to talk. When at length the gentleman had concluded what he came to tell Padre Cataldo, the latter turned towards the younger man, who got up and approached him, exclaiming, “O father! how is it I find you here? I thought you had died at Rionero. I witnessed the treatment you received there, and I and many others believed you were dead. By what miracle did you escape?” When the conversation became more general, the young man, who could hardly recover from his emotion, told Ida that he should never forget the father's countenance, as he sat silent and calm on his horse, with stones, sticks, and missives of all sorts flung at him. The blood poured from his head; but there seemed to be a celestial light beaming from his face which reminded him of the pictures he had seen of the martyred saints.

We finished our evening on our own loggia. It was a lovely night, and we felt we could never weary of watching the moonbeams on the sea, and, when the moon had gone down, the fishermen's little boats, noiselessly sailing one by one from the dense, dark shadow of the caves where they are moored, and then, each with a burning torch at the prow, casting anchor and waiting for the fish to rise to the light. From time to time the fishermen utter a soft, monotonous cry to each other in a minor key, which comes floating through the darkness on the still night-air like an echo from another world. There must be a strange fascination in this life of the fisherman, whose occupation begins as other men are laying aside theirs, and is continued through the silence of the night on the vast solitude of the ocean.

Don Emidio drew his chair near to where I was sitting, leaning on the low wall of the loggia and looking down upon the plain of waters, which so mysteriously appear to flash an unreal light from their dark bosom, as if the sea itself gave out sparks. Presently I heard a voice asking me if I thought I could learn to love the world-famous beauty of the Bay of Naples.

“I have learnt to love it from the first moment I saw it; for I love all that is beautiful. And when the beauty of this glorious land comes to be wound up with the duties of my life, I shall love it doubly.”

“Say with life's affections too, dear Jane.”

“Why should I not say it? Of course I mean it.”

“Will you never tire of this unmitigated beauty? Will you never, cara mia, have a pining for a soft, gray day, with the perfumed damp that comes up from the velvet moss and dense greenery of an English copse? Will you heave no sigh for the pale but varied and most abundant wild flowers of your chilly springs, a lapful of primroses, a wealth of cowslips? Shall I have you longing after a narrow lane of yellow sand, the trees meeting overhead, the meadow-sweet growing lavishly in the moist hedge, and the ripe nuts hanging just within reach, crisp and sweet in their slippery brown shells? Shall I hear you reproaching me that the mushrooms are dotting the Sussex downs all round the fairy rings, and that you long to tread the close, fine grass where the sheep are browsing, with the little hillocks of purple thyme scenting the breeze with its aromatic breath? When your nerves are overstrung by the continuous dry heat and the brisk air of our joyous land, will not your Saxon nature long for one of the short autumn days of old England, when you might walk through the fields to the edge of the western hill, and watch the sun sink amidst yellow and red clouds painted on a pale blue sky, and then, returning in the soft wind of evening redolent with nameless perfumes, feel the damp like a creamy balm uncurl your locks and bathe your cheek as if with moist kisses? It will be almost dark when you reach home; there is a low wood-fire flickering on the hearth, and the steam of the urn curling up with a scent of new-made tea. Papers, pamphlets, magazines, and new volumes by the dozen from the London library are there to greet you. And day by day, hour by hour, in that land of rapid thought and universal intelligence, the latest news from pole to pole finds its way with every post into the remotest depths of the I country. Cara mia, it will not be so here.”

There had been a choking sensation in my throat as Emidio described the dear old land of my birth, and brought so vividly before me exactly those little touches of home and country life which I should most certainly not find in my future Roman palazzo or in the villa at Capo di Monte, beyond the garden of which I could not stray into any wild woods and barren but ever-beautiful heaths, as in England. But there was something in the close of the vision he called up before me which turned the current of feeling and made me smile. Strange as it may seem, I felt it was the newspapers and the I rapid intelligence that I could spare the more easily.

“There are good old books I have never read, Emidio, and which you have in your library. From time to time we will get a few new ones from the teeming British press. I am none the happier in England for tracing day by day the progress of modern ideas. I will turn my thoughts upon the past. I may sometimes sigh for the shady lanes and breezy downs of England; but I think the imperious beauty of Italy will hold quite as much sway over my heart in time. Are you satisfied?”

“I am satisfied as much as my jealous Italian nature will allow me to be.”

“Are all Italians jealous?”

“Nearly all, especially husbands.”

“But I shall never give you cause.”

Emidio was laughing, and so was I, when he more gravely added:

These results of modern civilization are not Christianity; and I am taking a very low standard in all I am now saying. But they are the dross of a civilization leavened by Christianity, and they are very different from the poison that found its way into the daily life of Roman men and women from the seething wickedness of the great heathen empire.

Nothing can exceed the interest of the paintings taken from Pompeii. Of course I was intimately acquainted with them from engravings, and had been all my life. One of the early impressions of my childhood was the delight of finding that the grave old Romans (and therefore the Greeks before them), for whom I had a very pagan admiration, were capable of appreciating humor as expressed in the movements and attitudes of animals. I was overjoyed at this touch of sympathy with a dead past; and I recommend all visitors to Naples to look out for certain cocks and hens and other creatures among the lesser mural decorations taken from Pompeii. The well-known dancing girls I had never properly admired until I saw them being copied by a Neapolitan artist in the Museum. He had not deviated one hair's breadth from the original outline; but the mere restoration of vivid coloring had imparted to them an airy, floating grace which I had failed fully to detect in the scratched and faded originals, but which I at once felt must have belonged to them when they decorated some rich Pompeian's house.

I found Mary lost in thought before a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury in repose. The lithe figure has just sat down to rest on the edge of a rock. The tension of the muscles is gradually relaxing. One foot as yet only touches the ground with the heel. Wait a moment, and the foot will yield and rest. Never was fatigue gradually giving way to repose more exquisitely depicted. Then Mary turned to the dead Amazon with the death-wound beneath her breast, and finally declared that having satisfied herself by revisiting these, that for one reason or another had haunted her for twenty years, she was ready to admire the others. It is curious how the long lines of statues and busts seem to give out cold. The same stone walls covered with pictures could never be so severely cold. The old gods and heroes seem to breathe upon you with an icy breath from out of the grave of the old classic world.

The best pictures in the Naples Museum are not very numerous, but are admirable specimens of the Italian schools. They are collected into one or two rooms, deserving time and study. A cursory view of the others will be sufficient to satisfy most people. There is much more to be seen besides the relics from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the statues and pictures. It is all worth visiting, and, to be fully appreciated, requires many hours to be spent on each different class of objects.

One of our most interesting excursions was to the Solfatara, not far from the Lago Agnano. This also is an extinct crater; and yet so barely extinct that we feel, as we tread the sulphur-checkered soil, and hear the hollow reverberation if we stamp on the ground, as if at any moment it might again burst forth.

The rocks are covered with sulphur and alum; and in my eagerness that we should all equally benefit by the sight, I wanted to persuade Ida just to take one peep. It would, however, have been a risk to do anything which even for a second might embarrass the action of her delicate lungs and weak heart. She tried to approach, but turned back with the feeling that one puff more would have suffocated her.

I think we all felt as if we were standing in one of the outer halls of a region never to be mentioned “to ears polite,” and almost too “Dantesque” to be pleasant. We gladly breathed a purer atmosphere as we passed out of the gate (inside which is a fabric of sulphur-works), and bent our steps between white walls on which the green lizards basked, and between fields of unripe corn and mulberry-trees, till we reached an open space commanding a fine view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli and the hills beyond. From thence we turned into the Capuchin church dedicated to S. Januarius, and said to be built over the spot where he suffered martyrdom in 305. There is a stone, on which he is believed to have been beheaded, let into the wall, and protected with an iron grating. It is seamed with red marks as of blood. It is very probably a stone on which he knelt and on which the blood fell. But a block, whether of stone or wood, for the purposes of beheading, is a modern invention. The Romans used a sword—as the Turks use a scymitar for that ghastly purpose to this day—and the patient knelt upright.

It was pleasant to rest in the cool church, which, humble as it is, is not without its quota of beautiful marbles, and is kept exquisitely clean, with fresh flowers on the altar, and all care taken of it as if the community were still there. We found only a lay brother left in charge. I think he said he had a companion. All the poor fathers were dispersed by Victor Emanuel's government, and Mass is only said on feast-days; though it seemed to be the only church in that immediate neighborhood, and the poor of the district must greatly miss the presence of the Capuchin fathers, those special friends of the poor.

As we came down the hill, we were met by peasant lads, who wanted us to buy lumps of sulphur and the skeletons of the pretty little fish called the sea-horse, which abound in this part of the Mediterranean, and which are just like the knights among chessmen. They may be seen alive in quantities in the aquarium at Brighton. They twist the tapering end of their tails round a fragment of sea-weed, or indeed, as the buoyancy of the water keeps them up, they need but to touch something stationary. And there they stand in groups, motionless, and looking for all the world like a grave assembly of horses' heads of the most delicate race, and with noses slightly turned up. Nothing can be more graceful than the way they hold themselves. Their heads are not bigger than those of ordinary-sized chessmen.