and ditto of blue cheese, per
diem; and as to a horse, if I possessed such an animal, I'd have given
a dinner-party yesterday and eaten him. You look surprised, but when you
see a little more of us here, you'll begin to think that prison rations
in the fleet yonder were luxuries compared to what we have. No matter,
you shall take share of my superabundance; and if I have little else to
offer, I'll show you a view from my window, finer than anything you ever
looked on in your life, and with a sea-breeze that would be glorious if
it didn't make one hungry.'

While he thus rattled on, we reached the street, and there, calling a
couple of soldiers forward, he directed them to carry me along to his
quarters, which lay in the upper town, on an elevated plateau that
overlooked the city and the bay together.

From the narrow lanes, flanked with tall, gloomy houses, and steep,
ill-paved streets, exhibiting poverty and privation of every kind, we
suddenly emerged into an open space of grass, at one side of which a
handsome iron railing stood, with a richly ornamented gate, gorgeously
gilded. Within this was a garden and a fish-pond, surrounded with
statues, and farther on, a long, low villa, whose windows reached to
the ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white
canvas.

Camellias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias abounded everywhere;
tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the
half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that
heightened the effect immensely.

'This is my Paradise, Tiernay, only wanting an Eve to be perfect,' said
Latrobe, as he set me down beneath a spreading lime-tree. 'Yonder are
your English friends; there they stretch away for miles beyond that
point. That's the Monte Creto, you may have heard of; and there's
the Bochetta. In that valley, to the left, the Austrian outposts are
stationed; and from those two heights closer to the shore, they are
gracious enough to salute us every evening after sunset, and even
prolong the attention sometimes the whole night through. Turn your eyes
in this direction, and you'll see the "cornice" road, that leads to la
belle France, but of which we see as much from this spot as we are ever
like to do. So much for the geography of our position; and now to look
after your breakfast. You have, of course, heard that we do not revel in
superfluities. Never was the boasted excellence of our national cookery
more se