ng hour. It was convenient to his
palace, and he could here give a fillip to his jaded sensibilities
by popping a boon companion over the cliff, and thus enjoy the fine
poetic contrast which his perturbed and horrible spirit afforded to
that scene of innocence and peace. Later he may have come hither also,
when lust failed, when all the lewd plays and devices of his fancy
palled upon his senses, when sin had grown insipid and even murder
ceased to amuse, and his majesty uttered his despair to the Senate in
that terrible letter: "What to write to you, or how to write, I
know not; and what not to write at this time, may all the gods and
goddesses torment me wore than I daily feel that I suffer if I do
know."

The poor patriarch was also a rascal in his small way, and he
presently turned to me with a countenance full of cowardly trouble and
base remorse, "I pray you, little sir, not to tell the landlord
below there that you have seen the Tarantella danced here; for he has
daughters and friends to dance it for strangers, and gets a deal of
money by it. So, if he asks you to see it, do me the pleasure to say,
lest he should take on (_pigliarsi_) with me about it: 'Thanks, but we
saw the Tarantella at Pompeii!'" It was the last place in Italy where
we were likely to have seen the Tarantella; but these simple people
are improvident in lying, as in every thing else.

The patriarch had a curious spice of malice in him, which prompted
him to speak evil of all, and to as many as he dared. After we had
inspected the ruins of the emperor's villa, a clownish imbecile of
a woman, professing to be the wife of the peasant who had made the
excavations, came forth out of a cleft in the rock and received
tribute of us--why, I do not know. The patriarch abetted the
extortion, but Parthianly remarked, as we turned away, "Her husband
ought to be here; but this is a _festa_, and he is drinking and gaming
in the village," while the woman protested that he was sick at home.
There was also a hermit living in great publicity among the ruins, and
the patriarch did not spare him a sneering comment. [This hermit I
have heard was not brought up to the profession of anchorite, but was
formerly a shoemaker, and according to his own confession abandoned
his trade because he could better indulge a lethargic habit in the
character of religious recluse.] He had even a bad word for Tiberius,
and reproached the emperor for throwing people over the cliff, th