“When Emma went, I began to recognise the full extent of my peril. Suppose I had not been strong, and had tried to rob her of her rest by detaining her instead of prescribing as her physician. Incidental caresses are beautiful, tender, endearing things. But to abandon yourself to a banquet of them on a Neapolitan autumn night, in the darkness and silence of a great house, hushed for a fever patient—a banquet of caresses with the loveliest woman in the world—and not a human soul to save you from falling in love! No, already I love Emma as much as an English gentleman may love a friend’s wife. She is to me the most beautiful, affectionate, loyal, respectable woman alive; and she has such a perfect freedom from mauvaise honte, as we used to say when I was studying that vile language at St. Omer, that she permits herself to grant me all the innocent caresses she would grant a brother. And she trusts herself with me too much. Pray God I may not mean these words ‘too much.’ I hope I am a gentleman. But I mean that she is too trustful, if I were a villain.
“Why did I let her go? There was no hurry; we were doing no harm,—nothing. It was restful for both of us, that standing side by side and pressure of friendly hands. I do not believe I ever felt so perfectly at peace with the world.
“No; the point remains, quo vadis? One cannot be perfectly certain, as certain as I should like to be, of anything stopping at a given point. And this soft air, this soft scene take away the powers of resistance. To yield to the temptation to love or kill seems natural here—to kill, not in the fierce rough-and-tumble of the North, but with the stab in the back, the poisoned bowl, or the measured duello of the South.
“I must leave this. Nay, I will leave it this very night. I cannot sail for Malta, let me see, for one—two days; but I can take up my quarters on my ship, and the same healthy breath of the ocean blows on every sea. Even in this beautiful Circean Bay I shall be myself there—and fling away soft imaginations and soft longings, and think of the French!
“‘Vanguard,’ 12 p.m.—Since I wrote the above, I have had a cocked hat full of strange adventures. I made up my mind to leave the Embassy there and then, lest dear Emma should come back after her sleep to bid me good-night before she returned to Sir William, and I should be weak and try to detain her. Buckling on my sword, I went down to the portiere, and asked him if a coach were procurable to take me to the Santa Lucia landing. I had not my pistols with me at the Embassy, because there could be no chance of my needing them, so I thought I would take a coach; for Naples has none too savoury a reputation at night. Unfortunately there was no coach to be had—Emma and Sir William having many horses and every variety of vehicle, and the Embassy standing a little outside the city gate. Besides, all the coaches in the near part of the city were gone to my fête at Virgil’s. The portiere was for knocking the men up and giving me one of Sir William’s coaches, which he said would take but a very few minutes, the men sleeping in their clothes, except their livery coats, which I consider an unhealthy habit. But of this I would not hear, fearing lest Emma should get the wind. I doubted my strength to go in the face of her hospitable entreaties.
“‘Nay,’ I said, ‘try for a vettura.’ As he prophesied, no vettura was forthcoming, so I determined to walk down to the landing—a very little way. I stepped out at a brisk pace; but when I was under the shadow of the hill which Sir William tells me is Palæpolis, the original citadel of the Greek city, now called Pizzofalcone, under which are clustered some cabins of the lowest class, I was set upon by three or four fellows. Luckily, contrary to my usual custom, I had buckled my sword upon my right-hand side, where I could draw it; and so I whipped it out to defend myself; and spitting the first of them in the stomach, which I knew to be more effective at a pinch than a slash from a man of my small stature, set my back against a wall of the kind which they use for poor buildings in these parts, and which I knew to be there. As they came on, in my excitement, I forgot about the spitting, and splashed for my life. And it saved my life: for a fellow to whom I gave a pretty cut, knew by the shoulder that he was fighting a left-handed man, and called out in the Neapolitan lingo words among which were ‘The Admiral! the Liberator of our country!’ Instantly the onslaught ceased, and all of them, including he whom I had spitted and the man whose shoulder I had slashed, knelt before me; and though I cannot understand the Neapolitan lingo, I felt sure that they were craving my forgiveness, which I was well ready to grant them, for the rascals had such a respect for their skins that, though there were four of them against a one-armed man, they had not come to quarters close enough to use their dangerous knives.
“Certain strange noises in the nature of signals then followed; and in a very few minutes I was surrounded by above a hundred of the lazzaroni, one of whom, speaking a few words of English, as is not uncommon in this port, explained that they were going to form a kind of bodyguard for me, to prevent any similar mishap from French sympathisers. This I was glad to accept, both in acknowledgment of the spirit that offered it, and because I knew that evil-disposed persons, favouring the French, had given some trouble by lurking near the landing to pay off national scores on my seamen straggling home in liquor. I gave each of the men I had bled a guinea, and I dare swear that, as soon as they are healed, they will be ready for more blood-letting on the same terms.
“We came near more letting of blood at the landing steps, for who should be there but Will! and there was a magnificent illumination of three oil lamps, by which he recognised me, surrounded by my evil-looking guard. Without pausing to reckon that they were more than a hundred to his one, he drew his sword, and was for cutting his way to me, but at the same time called to the sleepy drab of a Neapolitan watchman to fire his piece and give the alarm, which he promptly did, it being astonishing how soon these fellows are waked when they scent danger. Fortunately I stopped Will[6] before he cut down any of my protectors, and almost immediately a well-armed boat from the Vanguard came racing in to the steps. Warned by a few mischances, the Captain had ordered a patrol to lie off nightly, from darkness to daylight.