in this capital, with our best wishes and prayers for your speedy recovery. We entreat your acceptance of this produce of our garden, so much beneath the merits of your exalted person, as the only token of sincerity which the poverty of St. Francis enables us to present to you.” This address, you will allow, contained no indifferent specimen of monastic rhetoric; it was eloquent, kind, and, above all, flattering. But for the “speedy recovery,” I should have felt highly pleased. What! do my very looks betray inward disease to one who never saw me before? With civility and, I dare say, with a trembling accent, I requested an explanation on this delicate point. “If I have erred, sir, it was from having espied that vial before I looked at your countenance.” Neither St. Francis nor your humble servant were the losers by this eclaircissement.
Substituting a dollar for the half-crown which I had already destined to give to this adroit, but good-natured monk, and kindly thanking him for all the pretty things he had said, I observed to him, that he appeared to be perfectly correct, although he had drawn a false conclusion,—that illness had brought me to Naples; but that, whatever my countenance might indicate, the contents of the vial in the window were rather intended to re-establish the looks of my boot-tops than those of my face. The venerable father paid a neat compliment to English ingenuity, bowed affectionately for the small donation, assured me that the mineral waters with which the environs of the city abound, would soon effect my cure, and, requesting to be permitted now and then to enquire after my health, respectfully withdrew.
This was not the only visit I received of the same kind, although the only one that had to boast of any other return than my best thanks.
Having sent for a lacquais de place[1], a being with a cocked hat, silk stockings, and silver shoe-buckles (which, if flattened, might have served as frames to a moderate-sized cabinet picture),—soon made his appearance. His daily wages being settled at five carlins, I inquired his name, to which he replied with great gravity, “I am called Don Giuseppe Filiberti, or briefly Don Giuseppe, or, if your excellency pleases, Giuseppe without ceremony.” I preferred the least ceremonious appellation, and indeed, for his pride, should have abbreviated Don Giuseppe Filiberti into simple Joe, if the Neapolitan idiom would have sanctioned such a degradation. You must know, every body here is a Don. This epithet is one of the many remains of the language and manners of the Spaniards, who for a considerable time, and not very long since, were in possession of the kingdom of Naples. Nor is Don alone sufficient, when they mean to be very civil to you; they will address you Signor Don Tommaso, give you eccelenza, illustrissimo, and other inflated titles, which they are at no loss how to vary, as the case, or rather their ideas of courtesy, may require.
Although in the month of April,
- ↑ A man-servant hired by the day to direct strangers through the town.
