“_Viva il re!_” he answered enthusiastically, showing his white teeth, and motioned us to a street going eastwards up the hill. I saw and recognised the same fellow once or twice afterwards. He was a Michele di Laudo--Mad Michael, they called him--who, as chief of his vagabonds, was to take a prominent part in the defence of the suburbs against the French. We crossed the street under his protection, and on its farther side, before waving us on, he bent and snatched a kiss. The rank sweet touch of his lips was like a _visé_ on my passport into hell. It seemed to bring the blaze, the colour, the stench of the reeling streets clashing to a focus in my brain, and it sent me speeding on half drunk and half sick, loathing and hugging myself. I was an angel in Sodom, running blindly for the refuge of God’s wing in a dazzle of roaring lights, and confused by the glare, knowing not whether I turned to the self I had left or to the self that was awaiting me. Gogo, straining in my wake, panted as I hurried before him-- “For every dog but the watch-dog, a bone.” I turned on him, with a stamp. “A bone! I am meat for your masters, I tell you.” “I serve no Pissani,” he said sullenly. I shook him in my anger. “Never breathe his name to me again, or we part.” “Very well,” he said. “I thought as much. He has got his deserts.” “_Has_ he?” I glared at him one moment, then turned and sped on--up the street of the Giant, passing the north flank of the palace, where sentries stood on guard, and so into an open piazza, the Largho S. Ferdinando, into which the palace itself stuck a shoulder, and where were churches and the flaring portico of a theatre, and other buildings strangely fine in their contiguity to the slums we had left. And here, amidst the wild drift and gabble of a throng less foul but as aimless, we plunged and were absorbed, and stood together again to breathe. All Naples, it seemed, was bent on shouting down its brother. “What next?” bawled Gogo in my ear. A handsome inn, the “Orient,” stood comparatively quiet and isolated in an odd corner of the _Place_. “Rooms--there!” I answered. “Its exclusiveness makes it prominent,” boomed Gogo, with as much dryness as he could put into a roar. I beckoned him on imperiously. _On n’a jamais bon marché de mauvaise marchandise._ In a little we were installed in comfortable rooms. “Now order wine,” I said, “and we will drink.” I sipped, while he sat on a stool at my feet, soothing the weariness from them with a touch that was only my monster’s. The Chianti and the sorcery of his hand began to drug me. “Drink you too,” I murmured. He reached for his glass. “To whom?” he said. “What are we now? It makes no difference; only I must know.” “Death to all republics,” I cried, “and long life to the King of Naples!” “Ah!” he said, between a groan and a sigh. “Well--the poor child--you have cast her off, I suppose,” and he drained his glass.