Ay, good reader, utterly forgotten! The gay world, for so it likes to be called, has no greater element of enjoyment amongst all its high gifts than its precious power of forgetting. It forgets not only all it owes to others,--gratitude, honor, and esteem,--but even the closer obligations it has contracted with itself. The Palazzo della Torre was for a fortnight the resort of the curious and the idle. At the sale crowds appeared to secure some object of especial value to each; and then the gates were locked, the shutters closed, and a large, ill-written notice on the door announced that any letters for the proprietor were to be addressed to “Pietro Arretini, Via del Sole.” CHAPTER XXII. AN UPTONIAN DESPATCH British Legation, Naples. My dear Harcourt,--It would seem that a letter of mine to you must have miscarried,--a not unfrequent occurrence when entrusted to our Foreign Office for transmission. Should it ever reach you, you will perceive how unjustly you have charged me with neglecting your wishes. I have ordered the Sicilian wine for your friend; I have obtained the Royal leave for you to shoot in Calabria; and I assure you it is rather a rare incident in my life to have forgotten nothing required of me! Perhaps you, who know me well, will do me this justice, and be the more grateful for my present promptitude. It was quite a mistake sending me here; for anything there is to be done, Spencer or Lonsdale would perfectly suffice. _I_ ought to have gone to Vienna,--and so they know at home; but it's the old game played over again. Important questions! why, my dear friend, there is not a matter between this country and our own that rises above the capacity of a Colonel of Dragoons. Meanwhile really great events are preparing in the East of Europe,--not that I am going to inflict them upon you, nor ask you to listen to speculations which even those in authority turn a deaf ear to.