At one end of the room and on one side of it were wooden benches; the table was shaped like the room, and we sat round it in chairs. Presently a huge, smoking dish was brought in; a roasted kid, with vegetables, and very good it was. As we sat, curious, wild-looking beings, hinds fresh from their labours, whatever they might be, with faces so brown that they were hardly distinguishable from the woodwork, came in one by one and sat down in silence upon the benches against the walls to watch the chieftain and his guests eat. There they remained, smoking and scratching themselves, till the end of the evening, by which time the room was so befogged that it was difficult to see anything. Penelope, who was busy with her hospitable duties and the preparation of an excellent _risotto_, and other cates, did not sup with us, but came in afterwards, and sat down at the table caressingly near to her great husband. Dressed like a simple villager, she was not beautiful, but a good, honest woman of the peasant class, evidently worshipping the hero to the comforting of whose fading years she had devoted her humble life. It was a strange sensation to sit there supping under the wondering eyes of those mute peasants, much as the Kings of France used to eat, watched by their subjects. The interest to these good men must have been but meagre, for the conversation was in French, of which they had not the gift. From time to time one or another of them would march out as silently as he had come in, unnoticing and unnoticed, but some of them remained with us to the end, when there must have been about half a dozen left. We sat on and on, later than we should have done had not the skipper of the tramp sent up word to say that he begged us to leave early in the morning, otherwise he could not guarantee landing us at Naples in time to catch our steamer for Alexandria. So we stayed, luring our host on to talk of old times, of his many moving accidents by flood and field, of his ambitions—not for himself, but for his country—of the hopes realized and the hopes wrecked. Here again I was struck by his generosity. His dislike of Louis Napoléon was a matter of common knowledge, but when we talked of France and her recent misfortunes, for “greatness once fallen out with fortune” he had nothing but sympathy; in that very unlike some of the Emperor’s own men, whose talk was apt to press with heavy ingratitude upon the stricken Lion. Our symposium was so agreeable that it seemed a pity to break it up; it was good to listen to Billy Russell and Garibaldi, the former one of the best of talkers, the latter evidently delighted once more to have a glimpse into a larger world than that of his tiny domain. The Duke and I were content to sit and hear, until at last we felt that the grand old General, an invalid at best, must not be allowed to keep from his rest.