Lake of Como.
My dear Tom,--Though I begin this to-day, it may be it will take me to
the end of the week to finish it, for I am still very weak, and my
ideas come sometimes too quick and sometimes too slow, and, like an
ill-ordered procession, stop the road, and make confusion everywhere.
Mary Anne has told you how I have been ill, and for both our sakes, I
'll say little more about it. One remark, however, I will make, and it
is this: that of all the good qualities we ascribe to home, there is one
unquestionably pre-eminent,--"it is the very best place to be sick in."
The monotony and sameness so wearisome in health are boons to the sick
man. The old familiar faces are all dear to him; the well-known voices
do not disturb him; the little gleam of light that steals in between the
curtains checkers some accustomed spot in the room that he has watched
on many a former sick-bed. The stray words he catches are of home
and homely topics. In a word, he is the centre of a little world, all
anxious and eager about him, and even the old watchdog subdues his growl
out of deference to his comfort.
Now, though I am all gratitude for the affection and kindness of every
one around me, I missed twenty things I could have had at Dodsborough,
not one of them worth a brass farthing in reality, but priceless in the
estimation of that peevish, fretful habit that grows out of a sick-bed.
It was such a comfort to me to know how Miles Dogherty passed the night,
and to learn whether he got a little sleep towards morning, as I
did, and what the doctor thought of him. Then I liked to hear all the
adventures of Joe Barret, when he "went in" for the leeches, how the
mare threw him, and left him to scramble home on his feet. Then I
revelled in all that petty tyranny illness admits of, but which is only
practicable amongst one's own people, refusing this, and insisting on
that, just to exercise the little despotism that none rebel against,
but which declines into a mixed monarchy on the first day you eat
chicken-broth, and from which you are utterly deposed when you can dine
at table. In good truth, Tom, I don't wonder at men becoming _malades
imaginaires_, seeing the unnatural importance they attain to by a life
of complaining, and days passed in self-commiseration and sorrow.
In place of all this, think of a foreign country and a foreign doctor;
fancy yourself interrogated about your feelings in a language of which
you scarcely know a word, and are conscious that a wrong tense in your
verb may be your death-warrant. Imagine yourself endeavoring,
through the flighty visions of a wandering intellect, to find out the
subjunctive mood or the past participle, and almost forgetting the
torment of your gout in the terrors of your grammar!
This is a tiresome theme, and let us change it. Like all home-grown
people, I see you expect me to send you a full account of Italy and the
Italians within a month after my crossing the Alps. It is, after all, a
pardonable blunder on your part, since the very titles we read to books
of travels in the newspapers show that for sketchy books there
are always to be found "skipping" readers. Hence that host of
surface-description that finds its way into print from men who have
the impudence to introduce themselves as writers of "Jottings from my
Note-Book," "Loose Leaves from my Log," "Smoke Puffs from Germany," and
"A Canter over the Caucasus." Cannot these worthy folk see that the very
names of their books are exactly the apologies they should offer for not
having written them, had any kind but indiscreet friend urged them into
letterpress? "I was only three weeks in Sweden, and therefore I wrote
about it," seems to me as ugly a _non sequitur_ as need be. And now,
Tom, that I have inveighed against the custom, I am quite ready to
follow the example, and if you could only find me a publisher, I am
open to an offer for a tight little octavo, to be called "Italy from my
Bedroom Window."
Most writers set out by bespeaking your attention on the ground of their
greater opportunities, their influential acquaintances, position, and so
forth. To this end, therefore, must I tell you that my bedroom window,
besides a half-view of the lake, has a full look-out over a very
picturesque landscape of undulating surface, dotted with villas and
cottages, and backed by a high mountain, which forms the frontier
towards Switzerland. At the first glance it seems to be a dense wood,
with foliage of various shades of green, but gradually you detect little
patches of maize and rice, and occasionally, too, a green crop of wurzel
or turnips, which would be creditable even in England; but the vine
and the olive surround these so completely, or the great mulberry-trees
enshadow them so thoroughly, that at a distance they quite escape view.
The soil is intersected everywhere by canals for irrigation, and water
is treasured up in tanks, and conveyed in wooden troughs for miles and
miles of distance, with a care that shows the just value they ascribe
to it. Their husbandry is all spade work, and I must say neatly and
efficiently done. Of course, I am here speaking of what falls under
my own observation; and it is, besides, a little pet spot of rich
proprietors, with tasteful villas, and handsomely laid-out gardens on
every side; but as the system is the same generally, I conclude that the
results are tolerably alike also. The system is this: that the landlord
contributes the soil, and the peasant the labor, the produce being
fairly divided afterwards in equal portions between them. It reads
simple enough, and it does not sound unreasonable either; while, with
certain drawbacks, it unquestionably contains some great advantages. To
the landlord it affords a fair and a certain remuneration, subject only
to the vicissitudes of seasons and the rate of prices. It attaches him
to the soil, and to those who till it, by the very strongest of all
interests, and, even on selfish grounds, enforces a degree of regard for
the well-being of those beneath him. The peasant, on the other hand,
is neither a rack-rented tenant nor a hireling, but an independent man,
profiting by every exercise of his own industry, and deriving direct
and positive benefit from every hour of his labor. It is not alone his
character that is served by the care he bestows on the culture of the
land, but every comfort of himself and his family are the consequences
of it; and lastly, he is not obliged to convert his produce into money
to meet the rent-day. I am no political economist, but it strikes me
that it is a great burden on a poor man, that he must buy a certain
commodity in the shape of a legal tender, to satisfy the claim of a
landlord. Now, here the peasant has no such charge. The day of reckoning
divides the produce, and the "state of the currency" never enters into
the question. He has neither to hunt fairs nor markets, look out for
"dealers" to dispose of his stock, nor solicit a banker to discount his
small bill. All these are benefits, Tom, and some of them great ones
too. The disadvantages are that the capabilities of the soil are not
developed by the skilful employment of capital. The landlord will not
lay out money of which he is only to receive one-half the profit. The
peasant has the same motive, and has not the money besides. The result
is that Italy makes no other progress in agriculture than the skill
of an individual husbandman can bestow. Here are no Smiths of
Deanstown,--no Sinclairs,--no Mechis. The grape ripens and the olive
grows as it did centuries ago; and so will both doubtless continue to
do for ages to come. Again, there is another, and in some respects a
greater, grievance, since it is one which saps the very essence of all
that is good in the system. The contract is rarely a direct one between
landlord and tenant, but is made by the intervention of a third party,
who employs the laborers, and really occupies the place of oar middlemen
at home. The fellow is usually a hard taskmaster to the poor man, and a
rogue to the rich one; and it is a common thing, I am told, for a fine
estate to find itself at last in the hands of the _fattore_. This is a
sore complication, and very difficult to avoid, for there are so many
different modes of culture, and such varied ways of treating the crops
on an Italian farm, that the overseer must be sought for in some rank
above that of the peasant.
We have a notion in Ireland that the Italian lives on maccaroni; depend
upon it, Tom, he seasons it with something better. In the little village
beside me, there are three butchers' shops, and as the wealthy of the
neighborhood all market at Como, these are the recourse of the poorer
classes. Of wine he has abundance; and as to vegetables and fruits, the
soil teems with them in a rich luxuriance of which I cannot give you
a notion. Great barges pass my window every morning, with melons,
cucumbers, and cauliflowers, piled up half-mast high. How a Dutch
painter would revel in the picturesque profusion of grapes, peaches,
figs, and apricots, heaped up amidst huge pumpkins of bursting ripeness,
and those brilliant "love apples," the allusion to which was so costly
to Mr. Pickwick. You are smacking your lips already at the bare idea
of such an existence. Yes, Tom, you are reproaching Fate for not having
"raised" you, as Jonathan says, on the right side of the Alps, and
left you to the enjoyments of an easy life, with lax principles, little
garments, and a fine climate. But let me tell you, Idleness is only a
luxury WHERE OTHER PEOPLE ARE OBLIGED TO WORK; where every one indulges
in it, it is worth nothing. I remember, when sitting listlessly on
a river's bank, of a sunny day, listening to the hum of the bees, or
watching the splash of a trout in the water, I used to hug myself in the
notion of all the fellows that were screaming away their lungs in the
Law Courts, or sitting upon tall stools in dark counting-houses, or
poring over Blue-books in a committee-room, or maybe broiling on the
banks of the Ganges; and then bethink me of the easy, careless, happy
flow of my own existence. I was quite a philosopher in this way,--I
despised riches, and smiled at all ambition.
Now there is no such resources for me here. There are eight or nine
fellows that pass the day--and the night also, I believe--under my
window, that would beat me hollow in the art of doing nothing, and seem
to understand it as a science besides. There they lie--and a nice group
they are--on their backs, in the broiling sun; their red nightcaps drawn
a little over their faces for shade; their brawny chests and sinewy
limbs displayed, as if in derision of their laziness. The very squalor
of their rags seems heightened by the tawdry pretension of a scarlet
sash round the waist, or a gay flower stuck jauntily in a filthy bonnet.
The very knife that stands half buried in the water-melon beside them
has its significance,--you have but to glance at the shape to see that,
like its owner, its purpose is an evil one. What do these fellows know
of labor? Nothing; nor will they, ever, till condemned to it at the
galleys. And what a contrast to all around them,--ragged, dirty, and
wretched, in the midst of a teeming and glorious abundance; barbarous,
in a land that breathes of the very highest civilization, and sunk in
brutal ignorance, beside the greatest triumphs of human genius.
What a deal of balderdash people talk about Italian liberty, and the
cause of constitutional freedom! There are--and these only in the
cities--some twenty or thirty highly cultivated, well-thinking
men--lawyers, professors, or physicians, usually--who have taken pains
to study the institutions of other countries, and aspire to see some of
the benefits that attend them applied to their own; but there ends the
party. The nobles are a wretched set, satisfied with the second-hand
vices of France and England grafted upon some native rascalities of
even less merit. They neither read nor think: their lives are spent
in intrigue and play. Now and then a brilliant exception stands forth,
distinguished by intellect as well as station; but the little influence
he wields is the evidence of what estimation such qualities are held in.
My doctor is a Liberal, and a very clever fellow too; and I only wish
you heard him describe the men who have assumed the part of "Italian
Regenerators."
Their "antecedents" show that in Italy, as elsewhere, patriotism is too
often but the last refuge of a scoundrel. I know how all this will
grate and jar upon your very Irish ears; and, to say truth, I don't like
saying it myself; but still I cannot help feeling that the "Cause
of Liberty" in the peninsula is remarkably like the process of
grape-gathering that now goes on beneath my window,--there is no care,
no selection,--good, bad, ripe, and unripe,--the clean, the filthy, the
ruddy, and the sapless, are all huddled together, pressed and squeezed
down into a common vat, to ferment into bad wine or--a revolution, as
the case may be. It does not require much chemistry to foresee that it
is the crude, the acrid, the unhealthy, and the bad that will give
the flavor to the liquor. The small element of what is really good is
utterly overborne in the vast Maelstrom of the noxious; and so we see
in the late Italian struggle. Who are the men that exercise the widest
influence in affairs? Not the calm and reasoning minds that gave the
first impulse to wise measures of Reform, and guided their sovereigns
to concessions that would have formed the strong foundations of
future freedom. No; it was the advocate of the wildest doctrines of
Socialism,--the true disciple of the old guillotine school, that ravaged
the earth at the close of the last century. These are the fellows who
scream "Blood! blood!" till they are hoarse; but, in justice to their
discretion, it must be said, they always do it from a good distance off.
Don't fancy from this that I am upholding the Austrian rule in Italy. I
believe it to be as bad as need be, and exactly the kind of government
likely to debase and degrade a people whom it should have been their
object to elevate and enlighten. Just fancy a system of administration
where there were all penalties and no rewards,--a school with no
premiums but plenty of flogging. That was precisely what they did. They
put a "ban" upon the natives of the country; they appointed them to no
places of trust or confidence, insulted their feelings, outraged their
sense of nationality; and whenever the system had goaded them into a
passionate burst of indignation, they proclaimed martial law, and hanged
them.
Now, the question is not whether any kind of resistance would not be
pardonable against such a state of things, but it is this: what species
of resistance is most likely to succeed? This is the real inquiry; and
I don't think it demands much knowledge of mankind and the world to
say that stabbing a cadet in the back as he leaves a _cafe_, shooting a
solitary sentinel on his post, or even assassinating his corporal as
he walks home of an evening, are exactly the appropriate methods for
reforming a state or remodelling a constitution. Had the Lombards
devoted themselves heart and hand to the material prosperity of their
country,--educated their people, employed them in useful works, fostered
their rising and most prosperous silk manufactories,--they would have
attained to a weight and consideration in the Austrian Empire which
would have enabled them not to solicit, but dictate the terms of their
administration.
A few years back, as late as '47, Milan, I am told, was more than the
rival of Vienna in all that constitutes the pride and splendor of
a capital city; and the growing influence of her higher classes was
already regarded with jealousy by the Austrian nobility. Look what a
revolution has made her now! Her palaces are barracks; her squares are
encampments; artillery bivouac in her public gardens; and the rigors
of a state of siege penetrate into every private house, and poison all
social intercourse.
You may rely upon one thing, Tom, and it is this: that no government
ever persisted in a policy of oppression towards a country that
was advancing on the road of prosperity. It is to the disaffected,
dispirited, bankrupt people--idle and cantankerous, wasting their
resources, and squandering their means of wealth--that cabinets play
the bully. They grind them the way a cruel colonel flogs a condemned
regiment. Let industry and its consequences flow in; let the laborer be
well fed, and housed, and clothed; and the spirit of independence in him
will be a far stronger and more dangerous element to deal with than the
momentary burst of passion that comes from a fevered heart in a famished
frame! Ask a Cabinet Minister if he wouldn't be more frightened by a
deputation from the City, than if the telegraph told him a Chartist mob
was moving on London? We live in an age of a very peculiar kind, and
where real power and real strength are more respected than ever they
were before.
Don't you think I have given you a dose of politics? Well, happily for
you, I must desist now, for Cary has come to order me off to bed. It is
only two p.m., but the siesta is now one of my habits, and so pleasant a
one that I intend to keep it when I get well again.
Nine o'clock, Evening.
Here I am again at my desk for you, though Cary has only given me leave
to devote half an hour to your edification.
What a good girl it is,--so watchful in all her attention, and with that
kind of devotion that shows that her whole heart is engaged in what she
is doing! The doctor may fight the malady, Tom, but, take my word for
it, it is the nurse that saves the patient. If ever I raised my eyelids,
there she was beside me! I could n't make a sign that I was thirsty till
she had the drink to my lips. She had, too, that noiseless, quiet way
with her, so soothing to a sick man; and, above all, she never bothered
with questions, but learned to guess what I wanted, and sat patiently
watching at her post.
It is a strange confession to make, but the very best thing I know of
this foreign tour of ours is that it has not spoiled that girl; she
has contracted no taste for extra finery in dress, nor extra liberty in
morals; her good sense is not overlaid by the pretentious tone of those
mock nobles that run about calling each other count and marquis, and
fancying they are the great world. There she is, as warmhearted,
as natural, and as simple--in all that makes the real excellence of
simplicity--as when she left home. And now, with all this, I 'd wager a
crown that nineteen young fellows out of twenty would prefer Mary Anne
to her. She is, to be sure, a fine, showy girl, and has taken to a
stylish line of character so naturally that she never abandons it.
I assure you, Tom, the way she used to come in of a morning to ask me
how I was, and how I passed the night; her graceful stoop to kiss me;
her tender little caressing twaddle, as if I was a small child to be
bribed into black-bottle by sugar-candy,--were as good as a play. The
little extracts, too, that she made from the newspapers to amuse me were
all from that interesting column called fashionable intelligence, and
the movements in fashionable life, as if it amused me to hear who Lady
Jemima married, and who gave away the bride. Cary knew better what I
cared for, and told me about the harvest and the crops, and the state
of the potatoes, with now and then a spice of the foreign news, whenever
there was anything remarkable. To all appearance, we are not far from a
war; but where it 's to be, and with whom, is hard to say. There 's no
doubt but fighting is a costly amusement; and I believe no country pays
so heavily for her fun in that shape as England; but, nevertheless,
there is nothing would so much tend to revive her drooping and declining
influence on the Continent as a little brush at sea. She is, I take
it, as good as certain to be victorious; and the very fervor of the
enthusiasm success would evoke in England would go far to disabuse the
foreigner of his notion that we are only eager about printing calicoes,
and sharpening Sheffield ware. Believe me, it is vital to us to
eradicate this fallacy; and until the world sees a British fleet reeling
up the Downs with some half-dozen dismasted line-of-battle ships in
their wake, they 'll not be convinced of what you and I know well,--that
we are just the same people that fought the Nile and Trafalgar. Those
Industrial Exhibitions, I think, brought out a great deal of trashy
sentimentality about universal brotherhood, peace, and the rest of it. I
suppose the Crystal Palace rage was a kind of allegory to show that
they who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones; but our ships,
Tom,--our ships, as the song says, are "hearts of oak"! Here's Cary
again, and with a confounded cupful of something green at top and muddy
below! Apothecaries are filthy distillers all the world over, and one
never knows the real blessing of health till one has escaped from their
beastly brewings. Good-night.
Saturday Morning.
A regular Italian morning, Tom, and such a view! The mists are swooping
down the Alps, and showing cliffs and crags in every tint of sunlit
verdure. The lake is blue as a dark turquoise, reflecting the banks and
their hundred villas in the calm water. The odor of the orange-flower
and the oleander load the air, and, except my vagabonds under the
window, there is not an element of the picture devoid of interest and
beauty. There they are as usual; one of them has his arm in a bloody
rag, I perceive, the consequence of a row last night,--at least,
Paddy Byrne saw a fellow wiping his knife and washing his bands in the
lake--very suspicious circumstances--just as he was going to bed.
I have been hearing all about our neighbors,--at least, Cary has been
interrogating the gardener, and "reporting progress" to me as well
as she could make him out. This Lake of Como seems the paradise of
_ci-devant_ theatrical folk; all the prima donnas who have amassed
millions, and all the dancers that have pirouetted into great wealth,
appear to have fixed their ambition on retiring to this spot. Of a
truth, it is the very antithesis to a stage existence. The silent and
almost solemn grandeur of the scene, the massive Alps, the deep dense
woods, the calm unbroken stillness, are strong contrasts to the crash
and tumult, the unreality and uproar of a theatre. I wonder, do they
enjoy the change? I am curious to know if they yearn for the blaze
of the dress-circle and the waving pit? Do they long at heart for the
stormy crash of the orchestra and the maddening torrent of applause;
and does the actual world of real flowers and trees and terraces and
fountains seem in their eyes a poor counterfeit of the dramatic one?
It would not be unnatural if it were so. There is the same narrowing
tendency in every professional career. The doctor, the lawyer, the
priest, the soldier,--ay, and even your Parliament man, if he be an old
member, has got to take a House of Commons standard for everything and
everybody. It is only your true idler, your genuine good-for-nothing
vagabond, that ever takes wide or liberal views of life; one like
myself, in short, whose prejudices have not been fostered by any kind of
education, and who, whatever he knows of mankind, is sure to be his own.
They 've carried away my ink-bottle, to write acknowledgments and
apologies for certain invitations the womenkind have received to go and
see fireworks somewhere on the lake; for these exhibitions seem to be a
passion with Italians! I wish they were fonder of burning powder to more
purpose! I 'm to dine below to-day, so it is likely that I 'll not be
able to add anything to this before to-morrow, when I mean to despatch
it A neighbor, I hear, has sent us a fine trout; and another has
forwarded a magnificent present of fruit and vegetables,--very graceful
civilities these to a stranger, and worthy of record and remembrance.
Lord George tells me that these Lombard lords are fine fellows,--that
is, they keep splendid houses and capital horses, have first-rate cooks,
and London-built carriages,--and, as he adds, will bet you what you like
at piquet or _ecarte_. Egad, such qualities have great success in the
world, despite all that moralists may say of them!
The ink has come back, but it is _I_ am dry now! The fact is, Tom, that
very little exertion goes far with a man in this climate! It is scarcely
noon, but the sultry heat is most oppressive; and I half agree with my
friends under the window, that the dorsal attitude is the true one for
Italy. In any other country you want to be up and doing: there are snipe
or woodcocks to be shot, a salmon to kill, or a fox to hunt; you have
to look at the potatoes or the poorhouse; there 's a row, or a road
session, or something or other to employ you; but here, it's a snug spot
in the shade you look for,--six feet of even ground under a tree;
and with that the hours go glibly over, in a manner that is quite
miraculous.
It ought to be the best place under the sun for men of small fortune.
The climate alone is an immense economy in furs and firing; and there is
scarcely a luxury that is not, somehow or other, the growth of the
soil: on this head--the expense I mean--I can tell you nothing, for,
of course, I have not served on any committee of the estimates since
my illness; but I intend to audit the accounts to-morrow, and then you
shall hear all. Tiverton, I understand, has taken the management of
everything; and Mrs. D. and Mary Anne tell me, so excellent is his
system, that a rebellion has broken out below stairs, and three of our
household have resigned, carrying away various articles of wardrobe, and
other property, as an indemnity, doubtless, for the treatment they
had met with. I half suspect that any economy in dinners is more than
compensated for in broken crockery; for every time that a fellow is
scolded in the drawing-room, there is sure to be a smash in the plate
department immediately afterwards, showing that the national custom of
the "vendetta" can be carried into the "willow pattern." This is one of
my window observations. I wish there were no worse ones to record.
"Not a line, not another word, till you take your broth, papa," says my
kind nurse; and as after my broth I take my sleep, I 'll just take leave
of you for to-day. I wish I may remember even half of what I wanted to
say to you tomorrow, but I have a strong moral conviction that I shall
not It is not that the oblivion will be any loss to you, Tom; but when
I think of it, after the letter is gone, I 'm fit to be tied with
impatience. Depend upon it, a condition of hopeless repining for
the past is a more terrible torture than all that the most glowing
imagination of coming evil could ever compass or conceive.
Sunday Afternoon.
I told you yesterday I had not much faith in my memory retaining even
a tithe of what I wished to say to you. The case is far worse than
that,--I can really recollect nothing. I know that I had questions to
ask, doubts to resolve, and directions to give, but they are all so
commingled and blended together in my distracted brain that I can make
nothing out of the disorder. The fact is, Tom, the fellow has bled me
too far, and it is not at my time of life--58 deg. in the shade, by old
Time's thermometer--that one rallies quickly out of the hands of the
doctor.
I thought myself well enough this morning to look over my accounts;
indeed, I felt certain that the inquiry could not be prudently delayed,
so I sent for Mary Anne after breakfast, and proceeded in state to a
grand audit. I have already informed you that all the material of life
here is the very cheapest,--meat about fourpence a pound; bread and
butter and milk and vegetables still more reasonable; wine, such as it
is, twopence a bottle; fruit for half nothing. It was not, therefore,
any inordinate expectation on my part that we should be economizing in
rare style, and making up for past extravagance by real retrenchment.
I actually looked forward to the day of reckoning as a kind of holiday
from all care, and for once in my life revel in the satisfaction of
having done a prudent thing.
Conceive my misery and disappointment--I was too weak for rage--to find
that our daily expenses here, with a most moderate household, and no
company, amounted to a fraction over five pounds English a day. The
broad fact so overwhelmed me that it was only with camphor-julep and
ether that I got over it, and could proceed to details. Proceed to
details, do I say! Much good did it do me! for what between a new
coinage, new weights and measures, and a new language, I got soon into
a confusion and embarrassment that would have been too much for my brain
in its best days. Now and then I began to hope that I had grappled with
a fact, even a small one; but, alas! it was only a delusion, for though
the prices were strictly as I told you, there was no means of even
approximating to the quantities ordered in. On a rough calculation,
however, it appears that _my_ mutton broth took half a sheep _per
diem_. The family consumed about two cows a week in beef; besides hares,
pheasants, bams, and capons at will. The servants--with a fourth of
the wine set down to me--could never have been sober an hour; while our
vegetable and fruit supply would have rivalled Covent Garden Market.
"Do you understand this, Mary Anne?" said I.
"No, papa," said she.
"Does your mother?" said I.
"No, papa."
"Does Lord George understand it?"
"No, papa; but he says he is sure Giacomo can explain everything,--for
he is a capital fellow, and honest as the sun!"
"And who is Giacomo?" said I.
"The Maestro di Casa, papa. He is over all the other servants, pays all
the bills, keeps the keys of everything, and, in fact, takes charge of
the household."
"Where did he come from?"
"The Prince Belgiasso had him in his service, and strongly recommended
him to Lord George as the most trustworthy and best of servants. His
discharge says that he was always regarded rather in the light of a
friend than a domestic!"
Shall I own to you, Tom, that I shuddered as I heard this? It may be a
most unfair and ungenerous prejudice; but if there be any class in life
of whose good qualities I entertain a weak opinion, it is of the servant
tribe, and especially of those who enter into the confidential category.
They are, to my thinking, a pestilent race, either tyrannizing over the
weakness, or fawning to the vices, of their employers. I have known a
score of them, and I rejoice to think that a very large proportion of
that number have been since transported for life.
"Does Giacomo speak English?" asked I.
"Perfectly, papa; as well as French, Spanish, German, and a little
Russian."
"Send him to me, then," said I, "and let us have a talk together.
"You can't see him to-day, papa, for he is performing St. Barnabas in a
grand procession that is to take place this evening."
This piece of information shows me that it is a "Festa," and the post
will consequently close early, so that I now conclude this, promising
that you shall have an account of my interview with Giacomo by to-morrow
or the day after.
Not a line from James yet, and I am beginning to feel very uncomfortable
about him.
Yours ever faithfully,
Kenny I. Dodd.