ailed directly here.

"As soon as I landed on Tuesday I went to the Hotel de Messina, and
sent my card to the President. He is that man Palaccio, the
hotel-keeper's son, the man you sent out of the country for writing
pamphlets against the monarchy, and who lived in Sicily during his
exile. He gave me an audience at once, and I told my story. As he
knew who I was, I explained that I had quarrelled with you, and that I
was now prepared to sell him the secrets of an expedition which you
were fitting out with the object of re-establishing yourself on the
throne. He wouldn't believe that there was any such expedition, and
said it was blackmail, and threatened to give me to the police if I did
not leave the island in twenty-four hours--he was exceedingly rude. So
I showed him receipts for ammunition and rifles and Maxim guns, and
copies of the oath of allegiance to the expedition, and papers of the
yacht, in which she was described as an armored cruiser, and he rapidly
grew polite, even humble, and I made him apologize first, and then take
me out to luncheon. That was the first day. The second day telegrams
began to come in from the coast-towns, saying that the Prince Kalonay
and Father Paul were preaching and exciting the people to rebellion,
and travelling from town to town in a man-of-war. Then he was
frightened. The Prince with his popularity in the south was alarming
enough, but the Prince and Father Superior to help him seemed to mean
the end of the Republic.

"I learned while I was down there that the people think the father put
some sort of a ban on every one who had anything to do with driving the
Dominican monks out of the island and with the destruction of the
monasteries. I don't know whether he did or not, but they believe he
did, which is the same thing, and that superstitious little beast, the
President, certainly believed it; he attributed everything that had
gone wrong on the island to that cause. Why, if a second cousin of the
wife of a brother of one of the men who helped to fire a church falls
off his horse and breaks his leg they say that he is under the curse of
the Father Superior, and there are many who believe the Republic will
never succeed until Paul returns and the Church is re-established. The
Government seems to have kept itself well informed about your Majesty's
movements, and it has never felt any anxiety that you would attempt to
return, and it did not fear the Church party becau