ceful
queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the
cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty
takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the
buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war;
while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments
with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have
assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash
gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I
should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of
polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints
of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of
Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before
my arrival.

On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a
loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, "Voila des
rues qui ont bien peu de logique!" After returning two or three times to
the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the
new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance
of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my
friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian
blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the
picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I
enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to
his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for
information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who
bears the same name.

In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed
miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a
monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no
explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk
himself--strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a
revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is
shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There
remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution
of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party
of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus,
and continue their excursion