Then my bundle in the yellow pockethandkerchief
was scrutinised. It contained a coat,
waistcoat, and trowsers of fawn-coloured
Indian silk, a Turkish Grammar, a few
pocket-handkerchiefs and socks, an inkstand,
and a little packet of steel pens. The inkstand
was pounced upon with the greatest
eagerness, as a most suspicious article. It
was a square, spring-inkstand, covered with
black morocco-leather. It was opened, after
the corporal having tried his hand in vain,
by myself. The corporal was about to perform
his analysis of the compounds of this
mysterious vessel, by pouring some of it on
the floor, when I suggested that there was
very little of it, and that by dipping a slip of
paper in it, a needless extravagance might be
avoided.

Conceded. The corporal smeared a little
on the palm of his hand, applied his tongue,
and pronounced it to be neither more nor
less than ink. The steel pens proved no more
satisfactory.

The waggoners were now rigorously interrogated.
They protested in a plaintive tone,
and with deprecatory gesticulations, that
they were innocent of any complicity in any
crime of which I might or might not be
guilty; and that the combination had been
thus, that they had overtaken me on the
road, and had given me a lift, and that they
wanted to get to the next village to pass the
night. This was at once refused; for how
then could I continue my journey when
liberated? I begged they might not be
detained on my account. They were permitted
to depart, and I rewarded them for
the trouble they had been at, and my day's
journey, with the handsome sum of sixteen-
pence, which they gratefully accepted.

After they were gone, I was conducted to
the cancelleria, or town-hall, where the
corporation of the place proceeded to make a
procès-verbal of my case, to be laid before
the Giudice of Condurzi, a neighbouring
village, the capo luogo (head place) of the
district; for the judge who had superintended
my search in the guard-room was but a
giudice supplente, or vice-judge.

While the cancelliere was drawing up his
state-paper, I sat in the conclave, and
swaggered, in an affable manner, about my rank
and importance. I informed them that I was
a jurisconsult of the interior temple of the
law of Great Britain. That my father was
an eminent senator of the imperial parliament;
that I was a personal friend of her
Majesty's representative at the court of the
King of the Sicilies, to whom it would be my
duty to announce the infraction of international
relations, in which the authorities
of Oliveto had inconsiderately involved
themselves.

A good deal of my vaporings went over
the heads of my rustic functionaries; but I
saw that they began to be dimly conscious
that they might have possibly been guilty of
an indiscretion. Some of them began to
congratulate themselves on having had nothing
to do with my arrest, and the sub-giudice
became conspicuously uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, a messenger had been
despatched to the superior judge at Condurzi,
and no answer came till it was time to think
of supper and bed rather than continuing my
journey. I supped, wrote indignant letters
to the embassy, and slept, with Salzalo and
another corporal in my anteroom.

Next morning at daybreak I went out into
the street with Corporal Salzalo as my guard.
I found that no answer had come from the
giudice, so I ordered a mule to be ready to
go to Condurzi myself, and in the meantime
had my breakfast. This morning I was
clothed in silk apparel; wore gold rings on
my fingers, and antique coins for buttons in
my waistcoat.

On my expressing an impatience to start
for Condurzi, the brigadiere informed me
with some asperity that orders had arrived to
take me there whether I would or no, and
they were waiting for the guard. Soon a
body of Urban musketeers assembled with
the Capurbano at their head. This eminent
political chief was a pompous little man, full
of the dignity of conducting a state prisoner
to trial. He carried his musket in a military
style, and seemed much embarrassed when,
as I rode along with his troop, I treated him
with a patronising condescension of manner
inquiring about the produce of the country,
the state of the vines, and how the olive-crop
promised.

I felt a malicious pleasure in behaving with
a negligent levity which quite neutralised
the gravity of the occasion. When he fell
behind to avoid further conversation, which
he evidently felt was lowering him in the
eyes of his guard, and which the grim
Corporal Salzalo had given him a hint to
discontinue, I talked jocularly with the owner
of the mule, smoked cigarettes, and to crown
all, gathered and ate blackberries from the
hedges.

There was no law, even in the kingdom of
Naples, to prevent my comporting myself as
if I had been going to Condurzi for my own
pleasure, and had hired the party to guide
and guard me; but I am sure that if I had
adopted a " dejected 'haviour of visage," both
the capurbano and Corporal Salzalo would
have loved me better.

The road wound along a valley, watered by
a stinking sulphurous stream. After about
three miles we came to Condurzi, a much
smaller place than Oliveto, and approachable
only by rugged mountain tracks, whereas
Oliveto stands on a new and very tolerable
road. I had been revolving the line of
argument I should use to the giudice as I came,
and this fact furnished a valuable stepping-
stone. The judicial residence was in a large
semi-fortified building, which occupied the
abutting end of the hill on which the village