"I hardly saw dear Emma all day. Sir William, though he has borne the journey pretty well, has these bilious fevers so very seriously now, that he needs the closest watching. I saw her, for a minute, when I came back from the dockyard for dinner with the Queen, but I had cut the time so fine that it was the barest minute. I found the dinner very long. I had matters of the first moment to discuss with nearly every one around me, but had to be mum. This cursed place is so full of spies. One never knows that the fellow who takes away your broken victuals may not be a French diplomatist, equal in rank to a Secretary of Legation, playing the spy! So we had to fall back on the usual table talk,--scandal, almost the only topic in which it is safe to indulge, and one which includes every one in Naples, except those who are present, who will have their turn on their first absence. "Dinner over--and the gentlemen did not stay at their wine--after a short conversation with the Princess, who is the only one of Her Majesty's ladies who takes much pains to speak English, at which she is becoming quite intelligible, we went off to a consultation, which was to be followed by what Her Majesty has christened a Session, not a Council, in order that she may not have to summon the whole of her Ministers. This, of course, is aimed at the Marquis de Gallo, the War Minister, who is tottering and to be replaced. I am glad of this, for I detest him. He is as ignorant a fellow of common civility as he is of his duties. Sir William, whose health is better to-day, drove up for the consultation, at which De Gallo was also present; and I was led to believe that promises of protection, with supplies of arms, ammunition, and provisions (as I understood from the Governors of Syracuse and Messina), had been given to the inhabitants of Malta.