To translate Horace freely, our companion was a rhetorician, or talker by profession, and the most learned of his class in extraordinary legends and fabrications; in other respects an useful civil fellow, with an Irish brogue, which his service in the French army had not been able to eradicate, or even weaken, and the established cicerone of the place. To account satisfactorily for his wooden leg and French uniform, he anticipated our inquiries by informing us, that he had been crippled by a shipwreck on the French coast, and through the recommendation of his friends the _Duchess_ of Westmoreland and _Countess_ of Devonshire, patronized by Louis, "who allowed him this uniform coat to wear, and two _males_ a-day." In England, one would not have borne the sight of such a lying varlet another instant, but I must confess that the mere sound of our own language in a foreign town, disarmed our indignation, and we bore with the fellow, whom we found not unamusing, and from his local knowledge, serviceable. A very small degree of merit indeed suffices to open one's heart towards a fellow-countryman in a strange land; a truth no doubt known and acted on by knights of industry, matrimonial speculators, and "Broken dandies lately on their travels." The legate's palace is now divided into barracks and a prison, and the nakedness of its appearance upon a nearer view make its lofty proportions more striking. We were expressing to each other our wonder at its size, when our guide interrupted us with an original observation of his own:--"The reason of its size, sir, is quite _clare_. The pope, you see, always went about with such a _hape_ of monks--and of nuns--and of all them kind of people, that the big number of rooms which you see could hardly hold them any how." After all, if the annals of former times have been truly written, the Milesian's account of this merry menage might be nearer the truth than he knew or suspected. The Papal Chapel exhibits now but few remains of its former probable grandeur, its inside having been defaced with the most persevering animosity during the Revolution, and presenting little more than a damp bare shell, filled with the broken remains of monumental figures. Headless popes and crippled cardinals lie together in heaps, mingled in a manner which will render it impossible to restore to each his proper allotment of limbs, when the projected repairs of the chapel are put in execution. One tomb, broken up and shattered to pieces more than the rest, was pointed out by the old woman as the sepulchre of La belle Laure, an honour which, for aught I know, may be claimed by a tomb in every church of Avignon. An assertion apparently still more apocryphal, however, is that one of the small side chapels was built by Constantine.