rs, the less imminent, we are free now to avow,--Mr.
Norman Maitland had latterly addressed much of his mind to the political
intrigues of a foreign country: that country was Naples. He had known
it--we are not free to say how, at this place--from his childhood; he
knew its people in every rank and class; he knew its dialect in all its
idioms. He could talk the slang of the lazzaroni, and the wild _patois_
of Calabria, just as fluently as that composite language which the King
Ferdinand used, and which was a blending of the vulgarisms of the Chiaja
with the Frenchified chit-chat of the Court. There were events happening
in Italy which, though not for the moment involving the question of
Naples, suggested to the wiser heads in that country the sense of a
coming peril. We cannot, at this place, explain how or why Maitland
should have been a sharer in these deeds; it is enough to say that he
was one of a little knot who had free access to the palace, and enjoyed
constant intercourse with the king,--free to tell him of all that went
on in his brilliant capital of vice and levity, to narrate its duels,
its defalcations, its intrigues, its family scandals and domestic
disgraces,--to talk of anything and everything but one: not a word on
politics was to escape them; never in the most remote way was a syllable
to drop of either what was happening in the State, or what comments the
French or English press might pass on it. No allusion was to escape on
questions of government, nor the name of a minister to be spoken, except
he were the hero of some notorious scandal. All these precautions could
not stifle fear. The menials had seen the handwriting on the wall before
Belshazzar's eyes had fallen on it. The men who stood near the
throne saw that it rocked already. There was but one theme within the
palace,--the fidelity of the army; and every rude passage between the
soldiery and the people seemed to testify to that faithfulness. Amongst
those who were supposed to enjoy the sovereign confidence--for none
in reality possessed it--was the Count Caffarelli, a man of very
high family and large fortune; and though not in the slightest degree
tinctured with Liberalism in politics, one of the very few Neapolitan
nobles who either understood the drift, or estimated the force of the
party of action. He foresaw the coming struggle, and boded ill of its
result. With Mr. Maitland he lived in closest intimacy. The Italian,
though older than the E