worthy, yet it was still hard to endorse a rival's triumph and
to cut out all envy and stifle all pain. And now I had to go home and to
live beneath the same roof with Cecilia, and to see her sometimes, and
to talk and look like a friend. If you resist the Devil, will he always
fly from you? Is it not sometimes safer to fly from him? And is there
anywhere a baser fiend than that which prompted me to throw myself upon
my knees before her and tell her everything, and so barter honour for
an impulse? Brave or not, I know that I was wise when that afternoon I
packed up everything and went to say good-bye.

'I am ill,' so I excused myself, 'and I am a child of impulse. Impulse
says to me "Go back to Italy--to the air of your childhood--to the
scenes you love best." And I obey.'

'But you do not leave England in this way?' asked Cecilia.

'No, mademoiselle, I shall return. But, for a time, good-bye.'

They both bade me good-bye sorrowfully, and I went away. And whatever
disturbance my soul made within its own private residence, it was too
well-bred to let the outside people know of it.

And so it came to pass that I continue this narrative at Posilipo, in my
native air, within sight of smoking Vesuvius and the glittering city and
the gleaming bay--old friends, who bear comfort to the soul.

CHAPTER IV.--_NELLE CARCERI MUNICIPALE_

How do I come to be writing in a prison? How do I come to be living in a
prison? How is it that I, who never lifted a hand in anger against even
a dog, lie here under a charge of murder, execrated by the populace of
my native town?

I can remember that I wrote, when I took up my story, that it might, for
anything I knew, be a year before I should go on with it. It is twelve
months to-day since I set those words upon paper. I take it up again,
here and now, in dogged and determined defiance to that Circumstance
which has pursued me through my life, and which shall not subdue me even
with this last stroke--no, nor with any other.

Let me premise, before I go on with my own narrative, that Charles
Grammont, with whose murder I lie charged, developed a remarkable and
unexpected characteristic. A reckless spendthrift whilst penniless, he
became a miser when he found himself possessor of five thousand pounds.
He had returned to Naples, and had for some time engaged himself in
drinking, to the exclusion of all other pursuits. But he drank sullenly
and alone, and had dismissed from his socie