the men employed in
some minor domestic services about the church. When he had nothing to
do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to look at my
work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of,) nor in any way
meaning to be troublesome; but there was his habitual seat. His nose had
been carried off by the most loathsome of diseases; there were two vivid
circles of scarlet round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced his
presence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have forgotten
it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration. On the
second or third day, just I had forced myself into some forgetfulness of
him, and was hard at my work, I was startled from it again by the
bursting out of a loud and cheerful conversation close to me; and on
looking round, saw a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen or
eighteen years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man in
the chair. He talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably, in the
merriest way, for a quarter of an hour; evidently without feeling the
slightest disgust, or being made serious for an instant, by the aspect
of the destroyed creature before him.

166. His own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar type of
thoughtless young Italians, rather beneath than above the usual
standard; and I was certain, as I watched him, that he was not at all my
superior, but very much my inferior, in the coolness with which he
beheld what was to me so dreadful. I was positive that he could look
this man in the face, precisely because he could _not_ look,
discerningly, at any beautiful or noble thing; and that the reason I
dared not, was because I had, spiritually, as much better eyes than the
priest, as, bodily, than his companion.

Having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter, it was
driven home for me a week later, as I landed on the quay of Naples.
Almost the first thing that presented itself to me was the sign of a
traveling theatrical company, displaying the principal scene of the
drama to be enacted on their classical stage. Fresh from the theater of
Taormina, I was curious to see the subject of the Neapolitan popular
drama. It was the capture, by the police, of a man and his wife who
lived by boiling children. One section of the police was coming in,
armed to the teeth, through the passage; another section of the police,
armed to the teeth, and with high feathers in its caps, was coming up
throu