ol you are!' and at our
young ladies, when their backs were turned, with a glance which said
distinctly enough, 'You precious pair of ninnyhammers'; and then his
laugh--he had two kinds of laughs--one which you could hear, and another
which you could only see. I have seen him laugh at our governor and the
young ladies, when their heads were turned away, but I heard no sound. My
mother had a sandy cat, which sometimes used to open its mouth wide with
a mew which nobody could hear, and the silent laugh of that red-haired
priest used to put me wonderfully in mind of the silent mew of my
mother's sandy-red cat. And then the other laugh, which you could hear;
what a strange laugh that was, never loud, yes, I have heard it tolerably
loud. He once passed near me, after having taken leave of a silly
English fellow--a limping parson of the name of Platitude, who they said
was thinking of turning Papist, and was much in his company; I was
standing behind the pillar of a piazza, and as he passed he was laughing
heartily. Oh, he was a strange fellow, that same red-haired acquaintance
of ours!

"After we had been at Rome about six weeks, our old friend the priest of
Naples arrived, but without his subordinate, for whose services he now
perhaps thought that he had no occasion. I believe he found matters in
our family wearing almost as favourable an aspect as he could desire:
with what he had previously taught them and shown them at Naples and
elsewhere, and with what the red-haired confederate had taught them and
shown them at Rome, the poor young ladies had become quite handmaids of
superstition, so that they, especially the youngest, were prepared to bow
down to anything, and kiss anything however vile and ugly, provided a
priest commanded them; and as for the old governor, what with the
influence which his daughters exerted, and what with the ascendancy which
the red-haired man had obtained over him, he dared not say his purse, far
less his soul, was his own. Only think of an Englishman not being master
of his own purse. My acquaintance, the lady's maid, assured me, that to
her certain knowledge, he had disbursed to the red-haired man, for
purposes of charity, as it was said, at least one thousand pounds during
the five weeks we had been at Rome. She also told me that things would
shortly be brought to a conclusion, and so indeed they were, though in a
different manner from what she and I and some other people imagined; th