lth and pleasure resorts, without
even setting foot in our dear old England. I was young--and
enthusiastic. I spent the glorious golden autumn in Florence and in
Perugia, the Tuscan vintage in old Siena; December in Sicily; January
in Corsica; February and March at Nice, taking part in the Carnival
and Battles of Flowers; April in Venice; May at the Villa d'Este on
the Lake of Como; June and July at Aix; August, the month of the Lion,
among the chestnut-woods high up at Vallombrosa, and September at San
Sebastian in Spain, that pretty town of sea-bathing and of gambling.
Next year I spent the winter in Russia, the guest of a prince who
lived near Moscow; the early spring at the Hermitage at Monte Carlo;
May at the Meurice in Paris; the summer in various parts of
Switzerland, and most of the autumn in the high Tatra, the foot-hills
of the Carpathians.

And so, with my faithful Italian valet, Lorenzo, a dark-haired, smart
man of thirty, who had been six years in my service, and who had, on
so many occasions, proved himself entirely trustworthy, I passed away
the seasons as they came and went, always living in the best hotels,
and making a good many passing acquaintances. Life was, indeed, a
perfect phantasmagoria.

Now there is a certain section of English society who, being for some
reason or another beyond the pale at home, make their happy
hunting-ground in the foreign hotel. Men and women, consumptive sons
and scraggy daughters, they generally live in the cheapest rooms _en
pension_, and are ever ready to scrape up acquaintance with anybody of
good appearance and of either sex, as long as they are possessed of
money. Every one who has lived much on the Continent knows them--and,
be it said, gives them a wide berth.

I was not long before I experienced many queer acquaintanceships in
hotels, some amusing, some the reverse. At Verona a man, an Englishman
named Davis, who had been at my college in Oxford, borrowed fifty
pounds of me, but disappeared from the hotel next morning before I
came down; while, among other similar incidents, a dear,
quiet-mannered old widow--a Russian, who spoke English--induced me at
Ostend to assist her to pay her hotel bill of one thousand six hundred
francs, giving me a cheque upon her bank in Petersburg, a cheque
which, in due course, was returned to me marked "no account."

Still, I enjoyed myself. The carelessness of life suited me, for I
managed to obtain sunshine the whole year rou