of Sts. Peter and Paul, a national holiday—that meant the museum would be closed; we know every fish in the great aquarium, the finest in the world. Do we not always go there? did we not spend two hours there on our way down, pay to see the awful octopus fed, and to receive a shock from the electric fish? A visit to the antiquarians for some varieties of junk even more enticing than our Roman haunts would cost us more than eight francs.
Ischia! The name set vibrating a deep chord of memory. O Edward Lear, Edward Lear, you are responsible for many vagarious wanderings! I could think of nothing but the picture in the Nonsense Book of the old person of Ischia. Is he still growing friskier and friskier? still dancing jigs, eating figs?
“Have you ever been to Ischia?” I asked the mercante di campagna.
“Frankly, the sea incommodes me too much to make the voyage; but I have a brother who drives a cab at Casamicciola. The signori should not fail to visit the island,” he said.
The girl smiled encouragement. “This is just the season for the baths,” she said; “they are miraculous for rheumatism, gout, every kind of lameness. When they went there Olivetta, the wife of my uncle Ercole, could not walk at all—adesso, corre com’un diavolo (now she runs like a devil).”
“Pur troppo (Altogether too much)!” grumbled the mercante, just like any other brother-in-law.
“The signori will employ my uncle Ercole? he drives a piebald horse. They will give the uncle and aunt tanti saluti from me?” the beauty persisted.
Her influence, combined with Edward Lear’s, was too strong to resist. Rome is always there; it was now or never for Ischia!
We caught the little steamer which carried us steadily enough across the Bay of Naples. The shores were a living panorama done in sapphire and emerald. Fishing smacks with slanting lateen sails colored, discolored, one with a picture of Maria Stella del Mare painted upon it, flitted by us before the light breeze. The steamer had once been a private yacht; though her brasses are neglected and her deck less like polished satin than it must have been in her palmy days, she still has a sporting, rakish air, in keeping with our escapade. We passed Procida, a shining isle of beauty, where I was half tempted to land and search for the enchanted princess who must inhabit it!