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Though he certainly knew his subject so far as details went–for he not merely knew Italy well in its several provinces, but he understood the characters and tempers of the leading Italians–yet, with all this, I could not help asking him, If he was not satisfied with the old Italy, and yet did not like the new, what he did wish for?

“I have my theory on that subject, sir,” said he; “nor am I the less enamoured of it that I never yet met the man I could induce to adopt it.”

“It is no worse than the fate of all discoverers, I suppose,” said I; “Columbus saw land two whole days before his followers.”

“Columbus was a humbug, sir, and no more discovered America than you did.”

I was so afraid of a digression here that I stammered out a partial concurrence, and asked for some account of his project for Italy.

“I’d unite her to Greece, sir. These people, with the exception of a small circle around Rome, are not Latins–they are Greeks. I’d bring them back to the parent stock, who are the only people in Europe with craft and subtlety to rule them. Take my word for it, sir, they’d not cheat the ‘Hellenes’ as they do the French and the English; and as the only true way to reform a nation is to make vice unprofitable, I’d unite them to a race that could outrogue and outwit them on every hand. What is it, I ask you, makes of the sluggish, indolent, careless Irishman, the prudent, hard-working, prosperous fellow you see him in the States? Simply the fact, that the craft by which he outwitted John Bull no longer serves him. The Yankee is too shrewd to be jockeyed by it, and Paddy must use his hands instead of his head. The same would happen with the Italian. Give him a Greek master, and you’ll see what he’ll become.”

“But the Greeks, after all,” said I, “do not present such a splendid example of order and prosperity. They are little better than brigands.”

“And don’t you see why?” broke he in. “Have you ever looked into a gambling-house when the company had no ‘pigeon,’ and were obliged to play against each other. They have lost all decency–all the semblance of good manners and decorum. Whatever little politeness they had put on to impose upon the outsider was gone, and there they were in all the naked atrocity of their bad natures. It is thus you see the Greeks. You have dropped in upon them unfairly; you have invaded a privacy they had hoped might be respected. Give them a nation to cheat, however; let the pigeon be introduced, and you’ll not see a better bred and a more courtly people in Europe.”

That they had great social qualities he proceeded to show from a number of examples. They were, in fact, in the world of long ago what the French are to our own day, and there was no reason to suppose that the race had lost its old characteristics. According to my companion’s theory, Force had only its brief interval of domination anywhere; the superior intelligence was sure to gain the upper hand at last; and we, in our opposition to this law, were supply retarding an inevitable tendency of nature–protracting the fulfilment of what we could not prevent.

I got him back from these speculations to speak of himself, and he told me some experiences which will, perhaps, account for the displeasure with which he regards the changed fortunes of Spezia. I shall give his narrative as nearly as I can in his own words, and in a chapter to itself.