'I presume the Signer Loothere'--you will observe that he
changed the name according to the custom of his country--'is an
Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had
that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. _Has_ he a servant with
a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should
think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman,
'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.'
'Sir,' said I--you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own
absurdity, by this time--'that is true.' He then took an immense pinch
of snuff wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding
a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth
from which I had mounted. 'Below there, near the lamp, one finds an
Englishman with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that
he is the Signor Loothore.' I had been asked at six o'clock, and it was
now getting on for seven. I went back in a state of perspiration and
misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the
spot. But as I was going farther down to the lamp, I saw the strangest
staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently
hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found
it was the house, made the most of the whole story, and achieved much
popularity. The best of it was that as nobody ever did find the place,
Lowther had put a servant at the bottom of the Salita to wait 'for an
English gentleman;' but the servant (as he presently pleaded), deceived
by the moustache, had allowed the English gentleman to pass
unchallenged."

From Naples they went to Rome, where they found Lockhart, "fearfully
weak and broken, yet hopeful of himself too" (he died the following
year); smoked and drank punch with David Roberts, then painting everyday
with Louis Haghe in St. Peter's; and took the old walks. The Coliseum,
Appian Way, and Streets of Tombs, seemed desolate and grand as ever; but
generally, Dickens adds, "I discovered the Roman antiquities to be
_smaller_ than my imagination in nine years had made them. The Electric
Telegraph now goes like a sunbeam through the cruel old heart of the
Coliseum--a suggestive thing to think about, I fancied. The Pantheon I
thought even nobler than of yore." The amusements were of course an
attraction; and nothing at the Opera amused the party of three English
more, t