ccess. All along, he had pretended that we could
see Capri, visit the Blue Grotto, and return that day; but as we drew
near the island, painful doubts began to trouble him, and he feared
the sea would be too rough for the Grotto part of the affair. "But
there will be an old man," he said, with a subtile air of prophecy,
"waiting for us on the beach. This old man is one of the Government
guides to the Grotto, and he will say whether it is to be seen
to-day."

And certainly there was the old man on the beach--a short patriarch,
with his baldness covered by a kind of bloated woolen sock--a
blear-eyed sage, and a bare-legged. He waded through the surf toward
the boat, and when we asked him whether the Grotto was to be seen, he
paused knee-deep in the water, (at a secret signal from Antonino, as
I shall always believe,) put on a face of tender solemnity, threw back
his head a little, brought his hand to his cheek, expanded it, and
said, "No; to-day, no! To-morrow, yes!" Antonino leaped joyously
ashore, and delivered us over to the old man, to be guided to the
Hotel di Londra, while he drew his boat upon the land. He had reason
to be contented, for this artifice of the patriarch of Capri relieved
him from the necessity of verifying to me the existence of an officer
of extraordinary powers in the nature of a consul, who, he said, would
not permit boats to leave Capri for the main-land after five o'clock
in the evening.

When it was decided that we should remain on the island till the
morrow, we found so much time on our hands, after bargaining for
our lodging at the Hotel di Londra, that we resolved to ascend the
mountain to the ruins of the palaces of Tiberius, and to this end we
contracted for the services of certain of the muletresses that had
gathered about the inn-gate, clamorously offering their beasts. The
muletresses chosen were a matron of mature years and of a portly habit
of body; her daughter, a mere child; and her niece, a very pretty girl
of eighteen, with a voice soft and sweet as a bird's. They placed
the ladies, one on each mule, and then, while the mother and daughter
devoted themselves to the hind-quarters of the foremost animal,
the lovely niece brought up the rear of the second beast, and the
patriarch went before, and T. and I trudged behind. So the cavalcade
ascended; first, from the terrace of the hotel overlooking the bit
of shipping village on the beach, and next from the town of Capri,
clinging to