ich they
have set a strong will. This may have gone very far with ladies, who
very often conceive a kind of esteem for whatever they fear. He said
himself that his secret was, "always using them ill;" and certainly, if
facts could bear out such a theory, one might believe him. Probably no
man ever cultivated these tastes with such assiduity--these, I say, for
play and duelling were also passions with him.

He was _attache_ to our mission at Naples before he was sixteen, and had
the honour of wounding the old Marquis d'Espagna with the small sword
at the same precocious era. The duel originated after a truly Italian
manner; and as there are at Naples many incorrect reports of it, I
will take the trouble to give the real one. The Marquis was an old man,
married to one of the most beautiful women in Italy. She was a Venetian,
and if my memory serves me right, a Guillardini by birth. She married
him at eighteen to escape a convent, he being the richest noble under
the rank of the blood royal at Naples. Very unlike the majority of
Italian husbands, the Marquis was excessively jealous, would not permit
the most innocent freedoms of his young and lovely wife, and eventually
secluded himself and--worse still--her from all society, and never
appeared except at a court ball, or some such festivity that there were
no means of avoiding. It was at one of these festivities that the King,
who liked to see his ball-room put forth its fairest aspect, bantered
the Marquis on the rumour that had even reached the ears of royalty,
as to his inordinate jealousy. The Marquis, whose old spirit of
courtiership predominated even as strongly as his jealousy, assured his
Majesty that the worthy people of Naples did him great injustice,
and that, although conscious of the Marquesa's great beauty and
attractiveness, he had yet too high a sense of the distinguished place
he and his family had always held in the esteem of his sovereign to feel
jealous of any man's pretension; adding, "If I have not admitted the
conventional addition of a _cavaliere servente_ to my household, I would
beg your Majesty to believe it is simply because I have seen no one as
yet worthy to hand la Mar-quesa to her carriage or fold her shawl."

"Admirably spoken, Marquis!" said the King; "the sentiment is quite
worthy of one who has the best blood of Sicily in his veins. But
remember what an artificial state of society we live in; think of our
conventional usages, and what a