al mercy to hard
labor at the galleys. I knew your long story before you told it, but
listened to hear what new element you might have interpolated since you
saw the people at the Legation. I find you, on the whole, very correct.
How the Neapolitan Government and H. M.'s Ministers have mistaken,
mystified, and slanged each other; how they have misinterpreted law
and confounded national right; how they have danced a reel through all
justice, and changed places with each other some half-dozen times, so
that an arbiter--if there were one--would put them both out of court--I
have read already in the private correspondence. Even the people in
Parliament, patent bunglers as they are in foreign customs, began to ask
themselves, Is Filangieri in the pay of her Majesty? and how comes it
that Blagden is in the service of Naples?"

"Oh, it 's not so bad as that!"

"Yes, it's fully as bad as that. Such a muddled correspondence was
probably never committed to print. They thought it a controversy, but
the combatants never confronted each other. One appealed to humanity,
the other referred to the law; one went off in heroics about gallantry,
and the other answered by the galleys. People ought to be taught that
diplomatists do not argue, or if they do, they are mere tyros at
their trade. Diplomatists insinuate, suppose, suggest, hope, fear, and
occasionally threaten; and with these they take in a tolerably wide
sweep of human motives. There, go to bed now, my dear boy; you have
had enough of precepts for one evening; tell Giacomo not to disturb me
before noon--I shall probably write late into the night."

Temple bowed and took his leave; but scarcely had he reached the stairs
than Lord Culduff laid himself in his bed and went off into a sound
sleep. Whether his rest was disturbed by dreams; whether his mind went
over the crushing things he had in store for the Neapolitan Minister,
or the artful excuses he intended to write home; whether he composed
sonorous sentences for a blue-book, or invented witty epigrams for
a "private and confidential;" or whether he only dreamed of a new
preparation of glycerine and otto of roses, which he had seen advertised
as an "invaluable accessory to the toilet," this history does not,
perhaps need not, record.

As, however, we are not about to follow the course of his diplomatic
efforts in our next chapter, it is pleasant to take leave of him in his
repose.

CHAPTER XLIV. THE CHURCH PATRONS