many days in a thing which, though called
a diligence, did not exhibit much diligence, we came to a great big town,
seated around a nasty salt-water bason, connected by a narrow passage
with the sea. Here we were to embark; and so we did as soon as possible,
glad enough to get away--at least I was, and so I make no doubt were the
rest, for such a place for bad smells I never was in. It seems all the
drains and sewers of the place run into that same salt bason, voiding
into it all their impurities, which, not being able to escape into the
sea in any considerable quantity, owing to the narrowness of the
entrance, there accumulate, filling the whole atmosphere with these same
outrageous scents, on which account the town is a famous lodging-house of
the plague. The ship in which we embarked was bound for a place in Italy
called Naples, where we were to stay some time. The voyage was rather a
lazy one, the ship not being moved by steam; for at the time of which I
am speaking, some five years ago, steam-ships were not so plentiful as
now. There were only two passengers in the grand cabin, where my
governor and his daughters were, an Italian lady and a priest. Of the
lady I have not much to say, she appeared to be a quiet respectable
person enough, and after our arrival at Naples I neither saw nor heard
anything more of her; but of the priest I shall have a good deal to say
in the sequel (that, by the bye, is a word I learnt from the professor of
rhetoric), and it would have been well for our family had they never met
him.

'On the third day of the voyage the priest came to me, who was rather
unwell with sea-sickness, which he, of course, felt nothing of--that kind
of people being never affected like others. He was a finish-looking man
of about forty-five, but had something strange in his eyes, which I have
since thought that all was not right in a certain place called the heart.
After a few words of condolence, in a broken kind of English, he asked me
various questions about our family; and I, won by his seeming kindness,
told him all I knew about them--of which communicativeness I afterwards
very much repented. As soon as he had got out of me all he desired, he
left me; and I observed that during the rest of the voyage he was
wonderfully attentive to our governor, and yet more to the young ladies.
Both, however, kept him rather at a distance; the young ladies were
reserved, and once or twice I heard our governor cursi