In the winter of 1825 he returns again to Cephalonia, this time travelling by Inspruck and the Tyrol to Venice. Blood will tell; he cannot make friends with the Germans. "As to the people of every part of Germany," he writes, "honour to Cæsar for killing so many of them; stupid, slow, hard animals, they have not even so much tact as to cheat well. We always detected their awkward attempts. Out of these regions we descended into Italy, where we found civilised beings, warm weather, and the human face instead of the German visage." This is of course three parts chaff, but it serves to show how the nature of the man blows. And how could it blow otherwise? A soldier who had in his veins the blood of the victor of Ivry, of Mary Stuart, of Scottish chief and Norman noble, and whose whole nature had imbibed in Ireland, in childhood, boyhood, and youth, that "Celtic spell" to whose potent influence our most unemotional historian has borne witness, could no more make friends of the Teutonic type of humanity than an Arab horse in the deserts of the Nile could gambol with a rhinoceros lying on a mud-bank in mid river. He reaches Corfu in February, after a terrible passage of twenty days from Venice, and here there occurs an entry in the journal which is of interest: "_March 24th._--Sir Hudson Lowe's colonel, Gorrequer, is here. He called on me, but got not his visit returned. It is not my intent to consort with gaolers, though I have brought out the model of a gaol." Then he goes on to his island kingdom and sets to work at his roads, harbours, and buildings. He is delighted to get back to his Greeks again, and they are equally glad to have their king once more among them. "Now," he writes on arrival, "I am once more amongst my merry Greeks, who are worth all other nations put together. I like to see, to hear them. I like their fun, their good humour, their Paddy ways, for they are very like Irishmen." His intense love of animals is constantly coming out in letter and diary. Blanco, the charger of Peninsula days, he will never abandon. He has brought this old friend out from England, despite his years, paying high for the passage. "My bill for him and baggage is _only_ one hundred pounds. How _honest_ John Bull in the city touches one's pocket. Thirty of this is for Blanco, twenty for King, seven for insurance, the rest is cheat and devilment. However, anything is better than cutting Blanco's throat after sixteen years' comradeship. I may go to perdition, but not for Blanco anyways. My poor, good old beast!" Again, as he draws near Cephalonia, he pictures to himself his first visit to his two famous roads, and wishes that, in case of death, he may be buried in the old chapel on the summit of St. Liberale's Mountain, so as to "lie on the top of the road. Many a poor mule's soul will say a good word for me at the last day, when they remember the old road."