Mr. Penberthy, and about the only one I ever
remember to have feared, in my life."

Meanwhile, if the scene to seaward was cheerless, that to landward
offered but small improvement. For the murk of low-brooding cloud and
falling rain blotted out the Castel S. Elmo, and the Capo di Monte and
Pizzafalcone heights. Even the Castello del'Ovo down on the shore line,
comparatively near at hand, loomed up but a denser mass of indigo-gray
amid the all obtaining grayness. The tall multi-coloured,
many-shuttered houses fronting the quays--restaurants, _cafes_,
money-changers' bureaux, ships' chandlers, and slopshops--looked tawdry
and degraded as a clown's painted face seen by daylight. Thick,
malodorous vapours arose from the squalid streets, lying back on the
level, and from the crowded shipping of the port. These hung in the
stagnant air, about the forest of masts and the funnels of steamers.
And the noise of the place was as that of Bedlam let loose.--The
long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal pitched from the baskets down
the echoing, iron shoots. The grate and scream of saws cutting through
blocks of stone and marble. The grind of heavy wheels upon the broken,
irregular flags. The struggling clatter of hoofs, lashing of whips,
squeal of mules, savage voices raised in cries and imprecations. The
clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner,
blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The
shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster
iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran
out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this,
as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting,
ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid,
sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities of her trade and her
poverty alike disclosed, her fictions and her foulness uncondoned by
reconciling sunshine, Naples had declined from radiant goddess to
common drab.

It was in this character that Richard Calmady, driving yesterday, and
for the first time, through the streets at noon, had been fated to see
his so fondly-idealised city. It was in this character that he
apprehended it again to-day, waiting in his deck-cabin until cessation
of the rain and on-coming of the friendly dusk should render it not
wholly odious to sit out on deck. The hours lagged, and even this
bright and usually spotless apartment--with its