Carnival, with its fantastic follies, when the most constitutionally sedate by a species of frenzied reaction become the most reckless in absurdity, was past. Holy Week, with its gorgeous ecclesiastical mummery—its magnificent fire-works, and its still more magnificent illumination was likewise gone. Nearly all the travelers who had been spending the winter in Rome, including the two thousand English faces which, from their constant repetition at every public place, seemed at least two hundred thousand, had disappeared. Our own party had lingered after the rest, loath to leave, perhaps forever, the most fascinating city in the world to an intelligent mind. But at last we too, had determined to go, and our destination was Naples.
That very afternoon we had taken one of the tumble-down carriages, which station on the Piazza di Spagna, to make a farewell giro through the Forum. Leaving Rome is not like leaving any other town. Associations dating from early childhood, and linking the present with the past, make familiar, before they are known, objects in themselves so intrinsically interesting and beautiful, that the strongest attachment is sure to follow a first actual acquaintance with them. And when that acquaintance has been by daily intercourse matured, it is hard to give it up.
The weather was delicious. And as our crazy vehicle rattled over the disjointed pavement of the Appian way, among sandaled monks, lounging Jesuits, and herdsmen from the Campagna, a heart-sickness came over us which, in the instance of one, at least, of the party, has since settled down into a chronic mal du pays.
We had been taking our last meal at the "Trattoria Lepre," where we had so often, after a hard day's work, feasted upon cignale (wild boar), or something purporting so to be, surrounded by the bearded pensionnaires of all the academies.
Our Figaro-like attendant, who had served us daily for so many months, was more than commonly officious in the consciousness that the next morning we proposed to start for Naples. And, in fact, on the succeeding day at an early hour, an antediluvian vehicle, with chains and baskets slung beneath, drawn by three wild uncouth-looking animals, under the guidance of a good-for-nothing, half-bandit Trasteverino, in a conical hat and unwashed lineaments, might be seen emerging from the Porta San Giovanni, with their three Excellenzas in the inside.
The hearts of all three were too full for utterance—several miles we jogged on in silence, straining our eyes with last glimpses of St. Peter's, the Pantheon, and St. John Lateran.
At Albano we proposed to breakfast; and, while the meal was being prepared and the horses being refreshed, we started for a walk to the Lake, familiar to all the party from previous visits.
As we were seated on the bank, cigars in mouth, and as moody as might be, the Frenchman first endeavored to turn the current of our thoughts by speaking of Naples, which he alone of us knew. The effort was not particularly successful. But the Frenchman promised that when we resumed our journey, he would tell us a Neapolitan story, the effect of which, he hoped, would be to raise our spirits.
After returning to the inn, and breakfasting upon those mysterious Italian cutlets, the thick breading upon which defies all satisfactory investigation into their original material, we resumed our journey.
Legs dovetailed, and cigars relighted, the Frenchman thus commenced the story of