see the stone gentleman sitting noseless in
his foot-bath, and spouting water briskly;
behind him the operatic flight of steps and the
crust-coloured church. I look down to the
right, and take in the shining sweep of street,
the jewelling bazaars, and gaudy scarf shops,
and cigar-and-salt temples, and Cuccioni's
monster photographs hung out, and Achille Rey
and his wares reduplicated over and over again,
stretching off to "the Course" yonder. I look
down below, leaning on the balcony rail, where
my knee brushes the style and titles of Our
Inn embroidered in golden characters, and see
crowns of hats, of familiar British make,
flitting by below; and am very speedily seen
myself by the little impish begging woman, who
is at me in an instant with her "Signoreeno!
Signoreeno mio!" I look steadily before me and
do reverent homage to Roman Gunter, whose
palace beards me just opposite. Great is Diana of
Ephesus! Great is he who sits enthroned yonder
at the Vatican! but there is one yet greater than
he: I see "Spillman aîné" looking at me in golden
characters, and I say advisedly that Spillman
aîné hath a broader influence than Pio. That
inestimable cook (dinners at fixed prices, and
evening parties supplied) is the true minister of
the interior. My countrymen stand by him
nobly. I am glad I derive a degree of moral
support from being under the shadow of so great
a man, and I shall speak of him by-and-by in a
little detail.

But our great scarlet chamber and banqueting-
room, so heavy and gloomily aristocratic,
you should see that, to appreciate our inn
thoroughly. There is a dingy rubicund magnificence
about it that almost depresses. The air
seems charged with the fragrance of ghostly
dinners, which it is consoling to know that princes
and other persons of quality have dined of.
Our chairs and furniture are of the heavy Robinson
Crusoe model, and when you strain at an
arm-chair, it sticks its limbs firmly into the
carpet and will not move. Our sofas are fearful
instruments of inconvenience, about as shallow
as a ship's berth, their backs developing
into sharp uneasy shoulders, which, by degrees,
project you gradually on to the floor. But then
our gold carvings are miracles of luxuriance and
artful ramification; and our looking-glasses, not
extensive but well-meaning, do their best; and
our clocks which never go, and gigantic
candelabra, which are never lighted, show what
we are capable of, on a great effort, when called
on to put out our strength. Even about our
door dispensation, there is something solemn and
awe-striking; for it is not ordered with a single
vulgar swinging leaf, but flies open magnificently
with two folds; which, being contracted to about
the dimensions of a cupboard convenience, you
are, so to speak, necessitated to fling both open,
and make a species of triumphant entry.

Host Fritz, the Teuton who directs this
establishment, is a pearl of great price; he
furnishes inexhaustible entertainment, and
should really charge himself in the bill. He is
impayable, as the French put it; being round
and pluffy, and hooped and braced, like a
compact German keg, and I fear is but too surely
marked out for an apoplectic embrace one of
these days. I wonder do the shrieks of laughter,
which his figure waked, still cling, commingled
with the ghostly dinners, to the walls of the
scarlet chamber? Was he not in an eternal
fume; and as his guests thickened did he not
play the overtasked brain, the overwrought
tissues, on the verge of giving way? It is
the cabinet minister, the financier, bowed
down with too much mind-work. At such
crises, when pressed with indignant protests
against certain table short-comings, he tosses
his arms wildly in the air, and seems to wave
away the subject frantically, as who should say:
"Beware, beware, incautious strangers! Harass
not one already toppling on the precipice of
insanity! Have a care! ye reck not the mischief
ye may do." At times, he appeals to those
better feelings, which somehow find a corner in
the breasts of even aggrieved and outraged
guests. "Have pity," he says, almost weeping;
"see you not how I am hunted from post to
pillar?" (expressed in corresponding Italic idiom).
"Figaro quà, Figaro là! Ces autres, these
Druses and Maronites, who have no bowels—
yes, no bowels!—may press me and hunt me as
a hare; but you, you! That supply of peach-
tart ran out before it came down to your turn.
Granted. Those delicate little birds that
madame relishes" (a smile for madame) "fell
short. Granted. The wine is inferior—say
perhaps acid. Granted. Well, wait; only wait, and
you shall see!" And he waves his hand over his
head with a flourish, which intimates that in the
illimitable perspective are great things. We
look at each other abashed; we feel that we
have done a mean thing, an unhandsome thing.
It was shabby thus harassing a great man with
our petty gastronomic grievances. But the
illimitable perspective never comes. At another
season he is rampant, boisterous, drunken with
success. The guests—and guests of quality, too
—have been crowding in tumultuously, and the
mercury has leaped from Stormy, and Much Rain,
to Very Fair. He is triumphant and walks upon
clouds. He is Inn-keeping Jove, and is
gracious: a wave of his hand and all things
shall be as you wish. Trouble yourselves not—
what matters money, time, or toil? It shall be
done. What, ho! within, there! I arrive in
a gush of passengers, the rejected of many
hostelries, and am led away to fourth-class
steerage accommodation, somewhere indistinctly
about the roof. Betimes in the morning I lodge
indignant protest against this treatment, and
find the glass very, very high indeed. He makes
as though he would take me into his bosom:
"Patience, only patience! BUT"—and he lays his
finger on my button with pressure, and looks
round over his shoulders, as though the air
were alive with conspirators—"but—there is yet
a—lit-tle—chamber" (he breaks his sentence up
into mysterious fragments)—"not ready now
—but will be anon—a gallant little apartment
—you understand?" (extra pressure on the