After a few weeks in Rome, I began to get seriously embarrassed from a financial point of view. Garcia was a charming fellow; but he was a poet, and, like all poets, he had expensive habits. He even challenged me to a duel once for laughing at some of his verses; but when I threatened to kick him, he fell on my neck and embraced me. However, my purse was not long enough to sustain the two of us, and I was sitting in a little café one day considering the position and glancing idly over the _Times_, when my eye fell on an advertisement announcing that the Turkish Government had vacancies for twenty military surgeons, and inviting applications. I read the advertisement again with delight, and at once determined to send in an application. Here was a chance of seeing life with a vengeance. But my spirits fell at once. I had only a few liras in my pocket; and how on earth was I to get to the Turkish Embassy in London? C---- was in his usual poetic condition of impecuniosity, and I was afraid to think how much he owed me. But I could not afford to be chivalrous, or I might lose the opportunity of a lifetime; so I tackled him at once. He assured me with tears in his eyes that he had not even the price of a flask of Chianti in his pockets; but I was inexorable. I pointed out to him that he had a very fine gold watch,--it was really a remarkably valuable timepiece, and had come down to him as an heirloom from some haughty old Castilian grandee. I impressed upon him that a gold watch is a most unsuitable adornment to a penniless person, who is moreover in debt, and I indicated to him a means by which it could be converted into currency of the realm. I think he felt it very much, poor fellow; but it was not a time for being over-scrupulous, and the heirloom of the Hidalgo of old Castile was duly deposited with the Roman equivalent for "my uncle" in a small and stuffy establishment situated in a narrow street with the suggestive name of the Via del Poppo. In return we received twenty-five napoleons--it was certainly an extremely handsome watch. Garcia gave me enough to take me to Neuchâtel, where I counted on receiving fresh supplies, and I let him keep the balance. So I left my Spaniard with a flask of wine before him in the city of the Cæsars, and I never saw him again. Peace be to his soul! He was intended by nature for an Irishman.