He refused to have his eyes bound and looked calmly on while the muskets of the firing party were being loaded. When all was ready, he straightened himself up and looked steadily at his executioners. “Spare my face,” he said, “and aim at my heart.” So died Joachim Murat, in the forty-eighth year of his life, and he met his end with a fearlessness and dignity which shone the brighter for the squalid surroundings in which he displayed them. There is a story still current in the Penisola that, after his death, his head was cut off, by Ferdinand’s order, and carried to Naples, in order that the “Butcher King” might be sure that his gallant enemy was no more. One would have imagined that the gruesome proof would have satisfied him and, having seen it, he would have been content to bury it decently. But the report goes on to say that nothing would induce him to part with it afterwards and that he kept it in a specially constructed case, under lock and key, by the side of his bed. Here, whenever his crazy panics seized him, he could open the box and finger the head and reassure himself again. And all this happened, not in the time of Caligula or Tiberius, but three years before the birth of Queen Victoria. CHAPTER XVII ITALIAN SEAS Our Moods and the Seas—Memories in Landscapes—The Healing of the Sea—A Vision in the Bay of Naples—Marion Crawford’s Yacht Expected—The Family Together at Leghorn—Lady Paget—A Bathing Scene—Hugh Fraser—“Spannocchi” for Dinner—The Avenging Boatman—Livorno, an Anomaly—Sunset on the Mare Ligure—Bay of Spezia, a Splurge of Colour and Light—A Hail Storm in Venice—The Joy of a Gondola—Moods of Venice—A Giorgione Beauty—The Nurseries of Venice—Her Shops—Saints and Heresies of the Thirteenth Century.