"'Why we live so high up,' explains Captain Burton, 'is easily explained. To begin with, we are in good condition, and run up and down the stairs like squirrels. We live on the fourth story because there is no fifth. If I had a _campagna_ and gardens and servants, horses and carriages, I should feel tied, weighted down, in fact. With a flat, and two or three maidservants, one has only to lock the door and go. It feels like "light marching order," as if we were always ready for an expedition; and it is a comfortable place to come back to. Look at our land-and-sea-scape: we have air, light, and tranquillity; no dust, no noise, no street smells. Here my wife receives something like seventy very intimate friends every Friday--an exercise of hospitality to which I have no objection, save one, and that is met by the height we live at. There is in every town a lot of old women of both sexes, who sit for hours talking about the weather and the _cancans_ of the place, and this contingent cannot face the stairs.' "In spite of all this, and perhaps because of it--for the famous Oriental traveller, whose quarter of a hundred languages are hardly needed for the entry of cargoes at a third-rate seaport, seems to protest too much--one is impelled to ask what anybody can find to do at Trieste, an inquiry simply answered by a 'Stay and see,' with a slap on the shoulder to enforce the invitation. The _ménage Burton_ is conducted on the early-rising principle. About four or five o'clock our hosts are astir, and already in their 'den,' drinking tea made over a spirit-lamp, and eating bread and fruit, reading and studying languages. By noon the morning's work is got over, including the consumption of a cup of soup, the ablution without which no true believer is happy, and the obligations of Frankish toilette. Then comes a stroll to the fencing-school, kept by an excellent broadswordsman, an old German trooper. For an hour Captain and Mrs. Burton fence in the school, if the weather be cold; if it is warm, they make for the water, and often swim for a couple of hours.