Chapter 6 - Page 2

balance. Smiling, as in consideration of
the other's provincial view of things, he rejoined, with an _aplomb_
that would have done credit to a politician, in an explanatory and
half-apologetic tone.

"Quite true, Signor Vice-governatore, as respects him you mention," he
said; "but not true as respects Sir Cicero, my illustrious compatriot.
Let me see--I do not think it is yet a century since our Cicero died. He
was born in Devonshire"--this was the county in which Raoul had been
imprisoned--"and must have died in Dublin. Si--now I remember, it _was_
in Dublin, that this virtuous and distinguished author yielded up
his breath."

To all this Andrea had nothing to say, for, half a century since, so
great was the ignorance of civilized nations as related to such things,
that one might have engrafted a Homer on the literature of England, in
particular, without much risk of having the imposition detected. Signor
Barrofaldi was not pleased to find that the barbarians were seizing on
the Italian names, it is true; but he was fain to set the circumstance
down to those very traces of barbarism which were the unavoidable fruits
of their origin. As for supposing it possible that one who spoke with
the ease and innocence of Raoul was inventing as he went along, it was
an idea he was himself much too unpractised to entertain; and the very
first thing he did on entering the palace was to make a memorandum which
might lead him, at a leisure moment, to inquire into the nature of the
writings and the general merits of Sir Cicero, the illustrious namesake
of him of Rome. As soon as this little digression terminated he entered
the palace, after again expressing the hope that "Sir Smees" would not
fail to accompany "Sir Brown," in the visit which the functionary fully
expected to receive from the latter, in the course of the next hour of
two. The company now began to disperse, and Raoul was soon left to his
own meditations, which just at that moment were anything but agreeable.

The town of Porto Ferrajo is so shut in from the sea by the rock against
which it is built, its fortifications, and the construction of its own
little port, as to render the approach of a vessel invisible to its
inhabitants, unless they choose to ascend to the heights and the narrow
promenade already mentioned. This circumstance had drawn a large crowd
upon the hill again, among which Raoul Yvard now threaded his way,
wearing his sea cap and his assumed naval uniform in a smart, affected
manner, for he was fully sensible of all the advantages he possessed on
the score of personal appearance. His unsettled eye, however, wandered
from one pretty face to another in quest of Ghita, who alone was the