"The Cavaliere Marco would advise your lively valour to speak more gently of his order. Some irregularities are doubtless committed by my brethren of the sword and mantle; but you must bear in memory, the saying of the cunning Lucchesi—'There are good and bad people every where.' Signor, speak not against my order! When I remember what it was but a few years ago—when the church of St. John was hung with the shields of four thousand Knights; its marble floors covered with the achievements of those who were gone; and its dome filled with the captured trophies of the Infidels—when the unsullied banner of the order waved from the ramparts of Sant'. Elmo, and we had gallies at sea and soldiers on the land, my mind is filled with sorrow and regret. When I look back to the glorious days of our illustrious grand master, old Villiers de L'Isle Adam, to those days when six hundred knights shut up in the island of Rhodes defended it for six months against two hundred thousand Turks, my soul is filled with exultation and chivalry! So beware, Signor Valerio! The Knights of Malta have suffered so much of late from the usurpation of Buonaparte and the unfulfilled and often reiterated promises of Britain, that they have grown somewhat petulant and hasty."
"Enough, signor—I sit rebuked, and submit quietly, knowing that I may be a little in error," answered the frank officer. "But to change the subject: if I am not soon recalled to head quarters, I shall have to quit this Catanzaro without beat of drum. The air of the place is getting quite too hot for me: I have been here only three weeks, and in that time contracted debts to the amount of some thousand ducats. I tried the rouge et noir—abomination! they only made matters worse, and the villanous shop-people, the Podesta, the Eletti and the tipstaves, are all ready to pounce upon me en masse: worse than all, the women of the place are at drawn daggers about me."
"You are quite to be envied!" said the young Calabrian with an air of impatient scorn.
"You shall hear whether it be so," replied the captain. "Ah! the uniform of the Queen's Italian Guard is something new here; and in truth we have been rather free with our favours: myself in particular. Three narrow escapes have been the consequence (these Calabrians are wondrously prone to assassination): once from the knife of a rascal hired by some frail fair one unknown, and once from a dose of bella donna, with which an angry damsel contrived to drug my chocolate the other morning: when I was just about to drink it, she threw herself at my feet in an agony of sorrow and horror, imploring my pity and forgiveness; so, after abundance of tears, threats, upbraiding, and all that sort of thing, I quietly put her outside the door"—
"And the third, signor; the third?" said the young Calabrian impatiently.
"Was from the poisoned weapon of a furious brother, whose sister I had jilted and grown weary of. Ah! the cowardly dog! he called it honour, I think: rather amusing in this rustic land of fauns and satyrs. But the adventure would have gone otherwise with me, had not my trusty serjeant, Annibale Porko, sucked the wound, and bathed it with brandy. Behold! 't is yet far from well," he added, pulling up the richly laced sleeve of his white uniform, and showing a long scar above the wrist.
"Faith!" said I, "if you have many such scrapes, Captain Piozzi, you are likely to be cut off, and suddenly: an Italian seldom brooks a wrong."
"But I cannot comprehend the nature of these unpolished Calabrians," replied this heedless harum-scarum gallant, into whose empty head the wine was rapidly mounting. "Per Baccho! they are mere savages—hottentots! Will you believe it? if I venture to pay a compliment to the mistress of my billet, or to kiss her daughter (which I am often disposed to do, the said daughter being rather fresh and pretty), the Maestro di Casa jerks up his Messina sash, twirls his whiskers, and plays so ominously with the haft of his knife, that I am compelled to keep my gallantry within very narrow bounds. I must even refrain from those little acts of cavalier-like politeness, by which some obliging citizens of Naples would consider themselves duly honoured: more especially if it were a noble gentiluomo of the Queen's Guard that deigned to salute one of his family. O! for joyous Venice, and its money-making mothers, who for sixty sequins—"
"Basta!" interrupted Marco, "you let every one hear you, Valerio, by speaking in such a key. By St. Antony—!"
"Hush Marco, 't is quite unfashionable to swear by these old saints: the newest canonizations are always most in vogue. St. Antony, indeed! The ancient fool; I would rather swear by his gridiron, which the monks show at Rimini. But to resume. Here, in this cursed province, if one but looks at a woman, cold iron is thought of instantly, and one may be dead as Brutus in less time than one can utter a credo.—What the deuce can delay my rogue of a groom?"