Walking one day on the terrace that over-hangs the bay, I happened to cast my eyes over the balustrade into the street, where there is a public seat that is much frequented by idlers, immediately beneath our _drawing-room_ window. It was occupied at the moment by an old fellow with a lame leg, as fine an old mendicant as one shall see in a thousand. This man was enjoying himself, and keeping an eye on the gate, in expectation of our daily sortie; for we had been a little irregular of late, and had given our tormentors the slip. Seeing me the beggar rose and pulled off his cap. As I had no change, I called a servant to bring me a _grano_. This little ceremony established a sort of intercourse between us. The next day, the thing was repeated. As I usually wrote in the cabinet of a morning, and walked on the terrace at stated hours, my new acquaintance became very punctual; and there is such a pleasure in thinking you are making a fellow-creature comfortable for a day at so cheap a rate, that I began to expect him. This lasted ten days, perhaps when I found _two_, one fine morning, instead of the _one_ I had known. The other _grano_ was given, and the next day I had _three_ pensioners. These three swelled like the men in buckram, and were soon a dozen. From that moment no one asked charity of us in our walks: we frequently met beggars, but they invariably drew modestly, aside, permitting us to pass without question. We might have been a month getting up to the dozen; after which, my ranks increased with singular rapidity. Seeing many strange faces, I inquired of Roberto whence they came; and he told me that many of the new visiters were from villages five or six miles distant, it having been bruited that, at noon each day, all applicants were accommodated with a _grano_ apiece by the _American admiral_. By this fact alone, you learn the extreme poverty of the poor and the value of money in this country. We went on recruiting, until I now daily review some forty or fifty _gaberlunzies_. As my time here is limited, I have determined to persevere, and the only precaution taken is to drive off those who do not seem worthy to be enrolled on a list so eminently mendicant; for a good many of the wives of the fishermen began to appear in our ranks. A new-comer from St. Agata, a village across the mountains, had the indiscretion lately, as he got his _grano_, to wish me only a hundred years of life. “A hundred years!” repeated the king, of the gang; “you blackguard, do you wish a signor who gives you a _grano_ every day, only a hundred years? Knock him down! away with him!” “_Mille anni, signore_,--a thousand years; may you live a thousand years!” shouted the blunderer, amid some such tumult as one would see around a kettle of maccaroni in the streets of Naples, were its contents declared free, “A thousand years, and _long_ ones too.”[12] FOOTNOTES: [11] “_Marina Grande_,” and “_Marina Piccola_,” or the “_Marinella_.”