“You are too good, Your Majesty, but I should feel like a fish out of water with an estate on a continent. I am an islander, and islands are in the keeping of fleets.”
“You are running away, Admiral, for the first time,” said the Queen, laughing good-naturedly; “but if you won’t take the city, the city must come to Portici. One cannot make these expeditions out here every day—why, it has been at the peril of our lives,” she added, suddenly remembering the hail—“but in the palace one can be surrounded all day long with these oldest paintings in the world. And sawing them off does not hurt them: why, the ancients did it themselves! When Herculaneum was dug out we found in one chamber the pictures ready sawn off for a removal. It was put off by the eruption for a couple of thousand years, but we carried out the wishes of the former owners.”
“Oh, Your Majesty!” said the Admiral.
And this is how we cavalcaded round Pompeji. Nor did we confine ourselves to the streets: we rode into the temples, up to the very altars; and in one of them—the temple, I think, of some Egyptian god—speaking through the interpretation of My Lady, the Director called the Admiral’s attention to a secret passage perforated in two places, observing that it was in that passage, and through its openings, that the concealed priests of the goddess were wont to pronounce the oracles to be delivered to a credulous multitude. He was going to add to this valuable piece of information other particulars, perhaps equally interesting, when the Prince Caracciolo stopped his progress sourly by telling him he need be at no further trouble, since he was sure that the milord Inglese would not believe one word of the story: the gentleman was too great an admirer of antiquity to be persuaded that his friends, the ancients, would be capable of upholding fraud in their worship. “I, for my part,” he added, “am convinced that all the oracles we read of in history were contrived by similar tricks of imposition.” And then this strange man, who in his own religion was profoundly superstitious, changed of a sudden, and would have us believe that these oracles were by direct inspiration of Satan, the arch-fiend of mankind, who, before the establishment of the Catholic faith, was absolute lord and master of the human race.
Once again the Prince’s conversation had to be left uninterpreted to the Admiral. This was a warning to My Lady, who, with the adroitness for which she was famous, immediately contrived to fill the Queen with a fresh desire, which was that the Court should sup at a well-known wayside house, a mere trattoria, which there was at Resina, on the way back to Naples. So back the donkeys clattered along the rutted lava street to the courtyard outside which we had left our calesses.
On the road to Resina they were not all blessings which the party in their hearts showered upon My Lady. The courtiers were tired of their al fresco day, and wishful to be back and banqueting in Naples in the least possible time; for they had had their breakfast, which corresponds to our midday meal in England, portentously early, and though they eat but two regular meals a day, the Neapolitans, who were accustomed to being in attendance on the Queen and My Lady, were for the most part gourmands, who looked to making up at their dinner for what they had scamped at their breakfast. But a little before Resina their opinions underwent a change, for it came on a smart shower, and a caless gives but little shelter. There had, moreover, been not the slightest sign of rain when we left Naples. The ladies were for the most part provided with cloaks. The Italian lady is both precious of her clothes and fond of wrapping, though indifferent to the most icy draughts. But some of the men were ill provided, notably the Prince Caracciolo, who was just two in front of us, and in spite of his reputed wealth, of a frugal turn.
Hastily stopping his caless, and handing the reins to the lady he was driving, the wife of a friend to whom he paid much attention, he requested her to stand up, and in an incredibly brief space of time had whipped his cocked beaver into the seat, and with the utmost sangfroid replaced it with a bandeau formed of his handkerchief, which unequivocally betrayed his attachment to the narcotic comfort of Virginia dust. With a wonderful celerity for him, his upper garment, which was of pale blue silk, and buttoned with unbecoming tightness over his unwieldy figure, was turned inside out, and a pleasing contrast formed between the milky hue of the sleeves and the purple bombazine lining of the rest of his habit.
You can hardly imagine what a figure of fun he made to us boys, who had already taken a violent dislike to the man, with his spleen and his shifting, inscrutable eyes. But he came out in a rather more welcome light shortly; for when we reached the inn at Resina, and had stampeded from the calesses for shelter into the huge sort of kitchen, lighted only by the great coach doorway, which served for the eating house as well as for the cooking place, there was such a confusion that we had doubts of getting even a cena, which, as every one knows, is a much inferior thing to a pranzo. But then the dour Prince, unmindful of his ridiculous attire, put on an air of smiling self-sufficiency, and saying, “Lascia far a me,” went out, and presently reappeared with the Padrone, who, with the help of his women, had been pushing the abandoned calesses out of the rain under a kind of pent-house. The Padrone, with whom the Prince seemed to be strangely familiar, made his appearance in the negligé of a nightcap and a calico short jacket, and having understood our present wants, though he had no idea of the Italians of our company being anything more than well-to-do gentry, disappeared with the truly Neapolitan promise, “Avrà un buon pranzo in un momento.”
“That’s a very short time,” said the Queen.
“Indeed, you will get it in a very few minutes,” said Caracciolo.