it is the most dreadful of all depressing circumstances. Everything, from the dingy tiles under his feet, and the dark eating-room downstairs, with its unaccustomed smells, up to the blaze of the Italian noon, and the incomprehensible tongue that everybody spoke, weighed upon Harry. He covered his face with his hands, sitting there upon his bed. What evil fate had led him to this unknown place? What should he do without even a name that belonged to him, without a friend? A gasp came into his throat, and the hand that covered his eyes was wet. He felt himself bowed down to the very ground. After thus “giving way,” however, Harry braced himself up, and recovered at least the appearance of courage. He made the best toilette he could by the help of the small washing utensils, which were not so entirely abhorrent to English customs then as they are now--for baths were not very general, and washing-basins were but small, in the first quarter, if not the first half, of this century. And then he sallied forth refreshed--into a new world. CHAPTER II. A NEW WORLD. Harry strayed about the town during the afternoon, losing his way, and finding it again; but got back to the hotel before the important hour of dinner, of which the English-speaking waiter had informed him. He was less amused than depressed with all he saw. The perpetual talk that seemed to be going on around him--sharp, varied, high-pitched, incomprehensible--gave him at first a sense of offence, as if all these people were doing it on purpose in order to bewilder him, and afterwards a profound feeling of discouragement. He was not clever he was aware. He had never been very great at his school work, and how was he to accomplish the first preliminary, the very initial step of existence here, the learning of the language, to which he had no clue, and of which he could not make out one word? It seemed to him as if years must elapse before he could master the very rudiments of the new tongue; and how was he to seek for work, or to get work to do, not knowing the very A B C of the life about him? Harry went doubling about the unfamiliar streets, looking with wistful eyes at every passer-by who had the look of an Englishman, and asking himself what he was to do. He did not seem to have any spirit left for the uphill work of learning a language. There rose up before him a vision of the exercises which he had once laboured at, daubing himself with ink, and of the verbs which he had got by heart overnight only to forget them in the morning. To think that he could not even ask his way! Wherever he strayed he looked at the people helplessly, as if he had been dumb, and anxiously examined all the street corners, without venturing to approach any shop, or lay himself open to any encounter. He was more fortunate than might have been expected in this point, for he found the right street corner at last, and the house, with its strange old courtyard, and the long dark _sala_