l_ poetry!"

"Feel it!"

"Yes, if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel it
shining into your heart?"

"My dear Maltravers, if I put the moon into my verses, in all
probability it was to rhyme to noon. 'The night was at her noon'--is a
capital ending for the first hexameter--and the moon is booked for the
next stage. Come in."

"No, I shall stay out."

"Don't be nonsensical."

"By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense."

"What! we--who have climbed the Pyramids, and sailed up the Nile, and
seen magic at Cairo, and been nearly murdered, bagged, and Bosphorized
at Constantinople, is it for us, who have gone through so many
adventures, looked on so many scenes, and crowded into four years events
that would have satisfied the appetite of a cormorant in romance, if it
had lived to the age of a phoenix;--is it for us to be doing the pretty
and sighing to the moon, like a black-haired apprentice without a
neckcloth on board of the Margate hoy? Nonsense, I say--we have lived
too much not to have lived away our green sickness of sentiment."

"Perhaps you are right, Ferrers," said Maltravers, smiling. "But I can
still enjoy a beautiful night."

"Oh, if you like flies in your soup, as the man said to his guest, when
he carefully replaced those entomological blackamoors in the tureen,
after helping himself--if you like flies in your soup, well and
good--_buona notte_."

Ferrers certainly was right in his theory, that when we have known real
adventures we grow less morbidly sentimental. Life is a sleep in which
we dream most at the commencement and the close--the middle part absorbs
us too much for dreams. But still, as Maltravers said, we can enjoy a
fine night, especially on the shores of Naples.

Maltravers paced musingly to and fro for some time. His heart was
softened--old rhymes rang in his ear--old memories passed through
his brain. But the sweet dark eyes of Madame de Ventadour shone forth
through every shadow of the past. Delicious intoxication--the draught of
the rose-coloured phial--which is fancy, but seems love!

CHAPTER II.

"Then 'gan the Palmer thus--'Most wretched man
That to affections dost the bridle lend:
In their beginnings they are weak and wan,
But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull end;
While they are weak, betimes with them contend.'"
SPENSER.

MALTRAVERS went frequently to the house of Madame de Ventadour--it was
open twice a week to the