Of the pasties the Benedictine took only one; she called out to him,--"Pray take half a dozen; pastry, your reverence surely knows, is easy of digestion." With good sense he took another pasty, thanking the princess for her attention, just as if he had not seen through her malicious raillery. And so, also, some solid paste-work furnished her with occasion for venting her spite; for, as the monk helped himself to a piece, a second rolled off the dish towards his plate,--"A third! your reverence; you seem anxious to lay a foundation"--"When such excellent materials are furnished to his hand, the architect's labours are easy," rejoined his reverence. Thus she went on continually, only pausing awhile to keep her promise of pointing out to me the best dishes.
All this while I was conversing with my neighbour on the gravest topics. Absolutely, I never heard Filangieri utter an unmeaning sentence. In this respect, and indeed in many others, he resembles our worthy friend, George Schlosser, with this difference, that the former, as a Neapolitan, and a man of the world, had a softer nature and an easier manner.
During the whole of this time my roguish neighbour allowed the clerical gentry not a moment's truce. Above all, the fish at this lenten meal, dished up in imitation of flesh of all kinds, furnished her with inexhaustible opportunities for all manner of irreverent and ill-natured observations; especially in justification and defence of a taste for flesh, she observed that people would have the form to give a relish, even when the essence was prohibited.
Many more such jokes were noticed by me at the time, but I am not in the humour to repeat them. Jokes of this kind, fresh spoken, and falling from beautiful lips, may be tolerable, not to say amusing, but set down in black and white, they lose all charm, for me at least. Then again, the boldly hazarded stroke of wit has this peculiarity, that at the moment it pleases us while it astonishes us by its boldness, but when told afterwards, it sounds offensive, and disgusts us.
The dessert was brought in, and I was afraid that the cross-fire would still be kept up, when suddenly my fair neighbour turned quite composedly to me and said,--"The priests may gulp their Syracusan wine in peace, for I cannot succeed in worrying a single one to death,--no, not even in spoiling their appetites. Now, let me have some rational talk with you; for what a heavy sort of thing must a conversation with Filangieri be! The good creature; he gives himself a great deal of trouble for nothing. I often say to him, if you make new laws, we must give ourselves fresh pains to find out how we can forthwith transgress them, just as we have already set at naught the old. Only look now, how beautiful Naples is! For these many years the people have lived free from care and contented, and if now and then some poor wretch is hanged, all the rest still pursue their own merry course." She then proposed that I should pay a visit to Sorrento, where she had a large estate; her steward would feast me with the best of fish, and the delicious _mungana_, (flesh of a sucking calf). The mountain air, and the unequalled prospect, would be sure to cure me of all philosophy,--then she would come herself, and not a trace should remain of all my wrinkles, which, by the bye, I had allowed to grow before their time, and together we would have a right merry time of it.