ate at night when I reached Trieste, and I left it at daybreak.
The small steamer in which I had taken my passage followed the coast
line, calling at even the most insignificant little towns and villages,
and winding its track through that myriad of islands which lie scattered
along this strange shore. The quiet, old-world look of these quaint
towns, the simple articles they dealt in, the strange dress, and the
stranger sounds of the language of these people, all told me into what
a new life I had just set foot, and how essential it was to leave all my
former habits behind me as I entered here.

The sun had just gone below the sea, as we rounded the great promontory
of the north and entered the bay of Fiume. Scarcely had we passed in
than the channel seemed to close behind us, and we were moving along
over what looked like a magnificent lake bounded on every side by lofty
mountains,--for the islands of the bay are so placed that they conceal
the openings to the Adriatic. If the base of the great mountains was
steeped in a blue, deep and mellow as the sea itself, their summits
glowed in the carbuncle tints of the setting sun, and over these again
long lines of cloud, golden and azure streaks marked the sky, almost on
fire, as it were, with the last parting salute of the glorious orb that
was setting. It was not merely that I had never seen, but I could not
have imagined such beauty of landscape, and as we swept quietly along
nearer the shore, and I could mark the villas shrouded in the deep woods
of chestnut and oak, and saw the olive and the cactus, with the orange
and the oleander, bending their leafy branches over the blue water,
I thought to myself, would not a life there be nearer Paradise than
anything wealth and fortune could buy elsewhere?

"There, yonder," said the captain, pointing to the ornamented chimneys
of a house surrounded by a deep oak-wood, and the terrace of which
overhung the sea, "that's the villa of old Ignaz Oppovich. They say
the Emperor tempted him with half a million of florins to sell it, but,
miser as he was and is, the old fellow refused it."

"Is that Oppovich of the firm of Hodnig and Oppovich?" asked I.

"Yes; the house is all Oppovich's now, and half Fiume too, I believe."

"There are worse fellows than old Ignaz," said another, gravely. "I
wonder what would become of the hospital, or the poor-house, or the
asylum for the orphans here, but for him."

"He 's a Jew," said another, spi