The dinner was good, the conversation easiest of the easy, taking in all, from matters commercial to social,--the whole seasoned with the greatest good-humor and no small share of smartness. Personal adventures by land and sea,--many of the latter recounted by men who made no scruple of confessing that they "dealt in ebony,"--the slave-trade. Little incidents of life, that told much for the candor of the recounter, were heard on all sides, until at length I really felt ashamed of my own deficiency in not having even contributed an anecdote for the benefit of the company. This preyed upon me the more as I saw myself surrounded by persons who really, if their own unimpeachable evidence was to be credited, began the world in ways and shapes the most singular and uncommon. Not a man or woman of the party that had not slipped into existence in some droll, quaint fashion of their own, so that positively, and for the first time, I really grew ashamed to think that I belonged to "decent people" who had not compromised me in the slightest degree. "Voilà un jeune homme qui ne dit pas un mot!" said a pretty-looking woman, with fair brown hair and a very liquid pair of blue eyes. The speech was addressed to me, and the whole table at once turned their glances towards me. "Ay, very true," said a short, stout little skipper, with an unmistakable slash from a cutlass across his nose; "a sharp-looking fellow like that has a story if he will only tell it." "And you may see," cried another, "that we are above petty prejudices here; roguery only lies heavy on the conscience that conceals it." The speaker was a tall, sallow man, with singularly intelligent features; he had been a Jesuit tutor in the family of an Italian noble, and after consigning his patron to the Inquisition, had been himself banished from Rome.