A narrative so melancholy, so tender, and so true, could not fail of its effect. I ran for refuge to the harpsichord, where a lady was singing divinely. I could not listen though: _her_ grateful sweetness who told the dismal story, followed me thither: she had seen my ill-suppressed tears, and followed to embrace me. The tale she had told saddened my heart, and the news we heard returning to the Crocelle did not contribute to lighten its weight, while an amiable young Englishman, who had long lain ill there, was now breathing his last, far from his friends, his country, or their customs; all easily dispensed with, perhaps derided, during the bustle of a journey, and in the madness of superfluous health; but sure to be sighed after, when life’s last twilight shuts in precipitately closer and closer round a man, and leaves him only the nearer objects to repose and dwell on.
Such was Captain ----’s situation! he had none but a foreign servant with him. We thought it might sooth him to hear “_Can I do any thing for you, Sir?_” in an English voice: so I sent my maid: he had no commands he said; he could not eat the jelly she had made him; he wished some clergyman could be found that he might speak to: such a one was vainly enquired for, till it was discovered that ill-health had driven Mr. Mentze to Naples, who kindly administered the last consolation a Christian can receive; and heard the next day, when confined himself to bed, of his countryman’s being properly thrust by the banker into the _Buco Protestante_; so they contemptuously call a dirty garden one drives by in this town, where not less than a hundred people, small and great, from our island, annually resort, leaving fifty or sixty thousand pounds behind them at a moderate computation; though if their bodies are obliged to take _perpetual_ apartments here, no better place has been hitherto provided for them than this kitchen ground; on which grow cabbages, cauliflowers, &c. sold to their country folks for double price I trow, the remaining part of the season.
Well! well! if the Neapolitans do bury Christians like dogs, they make some singular compensations we will confess, by nursing dogs like Christians. A very veracious man informed me yester morning, that his poor wife was half broken-hearted at hearing such a Countess’s dog was run over; “for,” said he, “having suckled the pretty creature herself, she loved it like one of her children.” I bid him repeat the circumstance, that no mistake might be made: he did so; but seeing me look shocked, or ashamed, or something he did not like,--“Why, madam,” said the fellow, “it is a common thing enough for ordinary men’s wives to suckle the lapdogs of ladies of quality:” adding, that they were paid for their milk, and he saw no harm in gratifying one’s _superiors_. As I was disposed to see nothing _but_ harm in disputing with such a competitor, our conference finished soon; but the fact is certain.