the very morning of the trial; and the dreaded advocate was face to face with the judge, who was in fear and trembling, as he expected to have to give judgment against him. The story went that when the judge rose to speak, his spectacles accidentally fell out of place. "I am struck blind!" he cried out; "forgive me, Signor Avvocato--I have not yet pronounced against you." Suddenly his spectacles fell across his nose again. "Forgive me again," he said; "I can see after all!" The Neapolitans laughed, but they believed all the same. When this redoubtable advocate fell ill, half Naples was praying fervently for his death; and if one reproached them for desiring the death of a fellowman, the answer was, "Non è un uomo, è un _jettatore_!" Signor Simonetti, I felt pretty sure, himself {78} sympathized with this sentiment, although he passed it off as a joke. I contributed a tale of a certain Count who had been pointed out to me, during my visit to Naples in the previous year, as the most dreaded _jettatore_ in the city. He was dining alone at a restaurant, and I was told that no one, if they could avoid it, would sit down in his company. Meeting his cousin, the old Duca di M----, in the street, he gave him his arm. The Duca suddenly slipped, fell, and broke his leg. He was stunned by the shock; and his first words, on recovering consciousness, were whispered (in confidential Neapolitan patois) into the ear of his formidable kinsman: "Grazie, perchè tu me putive accidere, e te si cuntentate de m'arruinare!" ("Thanks; for you might have killed me, and you contented yourself with laming me!")[5] Some of us went over to Radley College for the usual All Saints' play, the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, in Greek; and it _was_ Greek, no doubt, to the majority of the audience. Books of the words in English were, however, supplied--"an attention," remarked a local paper, "which the ladies received with unconcealed satisfaction, and the gentlemen with satisfaction which they vainly endeavoured to conceal." Some of the undergraduates present doubtless, like the schoolboy in _Vice Versa_, "recognized several words from the Greek Grammar"; but what pleased me was an elderly clergyman who declined to share his wife's copy of the translation. "No, no, my {79} dear," he said, "I can follow the Greek quite sufficiently well!" but before the end of the first act they were both very contentedly looking over the English version together.