No sooner were we dismounted, than Mr. Comyn felt it his duty to improve the occasion. He began on the vicissitudes of earthly grandeur: this very dwelling of the Neapolitan veteran was once tenanted by a maniple of those legionaries whose irresistible valour had subdued all our hemisphere from the Tyne to the swampy banks of the Nile, from the pillars of Hercules to the shores of India.
“Bravo, Comyn!” roared the Admiral, whom the Queen encouraged to treat her as a friend rather than a sovereign: “what a rare auspex, is it you call it? No, augur, you make. Why, since the fortunate event of the 1st of August every one of these four points at this moment acknowledges British sway; and not only the sea between them, but every accessible corner, and the liquid part of the whole globe, from Nootka Sound to Bass’s Straits, is directed from half a dozen valves in Charing Cross. But a truce to national bragging, which I detest as much as individual self-praise! It will only do by way of a claptrap at the end of a dry stage-speech, well and significantly bawled up to the forum or the galleries. No more of it in this place: let us begin the sober narrative of facts.”
“Oh Lud!” said her Ladyship, “is it so bad as that? Your Majesty, may the excavators cast about and find a good place to begin, that we may have something to see while our ears are being tickled? A golden statue let it be; not the same gold as the statue of Minerva, whose head the peasant split open with a hoe.”
In the face of her Ladyship’s protests the excavators were marched off to a place out of sight; the plain reason being that the part all round where we were was already excavated down to its original level.
The quadrangular court which we first entered into might be as large as the railed part of Leicester Square. It was surrounded on all sides by a colonnade supporting the roof of a gallery, and from the gallery you entered a number of small apartments not unlike the cells of a prison, or, to use an affirmative comparison, greatly resembling the galleries round some of our old inns, with the rooms adjoining. Only in the present instance the corridor was on the ground floor, there being no upper storey.
“This building, sir,” said Mr. Comyn, after a lame parley with the one-armed soldier, “was first taken for a gymnasium, afterwards for a prison, and by some for a school of gladiators; at present it is declared to have been a barrack for soldiers, because various pieces of armour were found in some of the cells. The little apartments are highly interesting. Many have their walls covered with inscriptions and curious drawings.”
“Very curious,” said the Admiral dryly, pointing to a pencil sketch such as one notices on the dead walls in the London streets which happen to have a national school near them—the master or beadle or other obnoxious person being represented by an outlined figure with straight lines for the legs and arms, and some sort of an irregular circle for head and body. This one had a nose added as well as an eye, and his feet were represented by pothooks, and his hands by toasting-forks, one of which held a straight weapon, looking, it must be confessed, more like a rod than any sort of sword. The letters of the inscription were all capitals, and although not absolutely like our present Roman alphabet, might easily be read, particularly by one who from Herculanean MSS. had become a little familiar with antique penmanship.
This was Mr. Comyn’s dictum, not mine, and the name of the figure was Nonius Maximus.
The Queen bade Miss Cornelia Knight, who was one of the party, and had a pretty talent for making poor sketches, to do a drawing of the figure for Her Majesty; which produced much merriment, for the one-armed guardian was such a recluse in his charge out here that he did not know his company. He at once rebuked Her Majesty, informing her that he had strict orders from the Queen not to allow the use of pencil, paper, or any writing or drawing materials within the town of Forum Pompeji. My Lady, after first exchanging confidential glances with the faithful servant, slyly winked at the Queen with her left eye, while a repeated gliding motion of her right thumb across the finger nearest it made a certain telegraphic signal, and the Queen made one who desired to serve her honestly a rogue, by giving him some carlins, to be allowed to break the rules, which she had made herself.
I could see that the Admiral was gravely shocked: the idea of professional duty never left him in the most incongruous situations.