"Then comes a spell of work at the Consulate. 'I have my Consulate,' the Chief explains, 'in the heart of the town. I don't want my Jack-tar in my sanctum; and when he wants _me_, he has usually been on the spree and got into trouble.' While the husband is engaged in his official duties, the wife is abroad promoting a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a necessary institution in Southern countries, where--on the purely gratuitous hypothesis that the so-called lower animals have no souls--the uttermost brutality is shown in the treatment of them. 'You see,' remarks our host, 'that my wife and I are like an elder and younger brother living _en garçon_. We divide the work. I take all the hard and scientific part, and make her do all the rest. When we have worked all day, and said all we have to say to each other, we want relaxation. To that end we have formed a little "Mess," with fifteen friends at the _table d'hôte_ of the Hôtel de la Ville, where we get a good dinner and a pint of the country wine made on the hillside for a florin and a half. By this plan we escape the bore of housekeeping, and are relieved from the curse of domesticity, which we both hate. At dinner we hear the news, if any, take our coffee, cigarettes, and _kirsch_ outside the hotel, then go homewards to read ourselves to sleep; and to-morrow _da capo_.' "To the remark that this existence, unless varied by journeys to Midian and elsewhere, would be apt to kindle desires for fresher woods and newer pastures, Captain Burton replies, 'The existence you deprecate is varied by excursions. We know every stick and stone for a hundred miles round, and all the pre-historic remains of the country-side. Our Austrian Governor-General, Baron Pino de Friedenthal, is a first-rate man, and often gives us a cruise in the Government yacht. It is, as you say, an odd place for me to be in; but recollect, it is not every place that would suit _me_' (1877). * * * * * "The man, who, with his wife, has made _this pied à terre_ in Trieste is a man unlike anybody else--a very extraordinary man, who has toiled every hour and minute for forty-four and a half years, distinguishing himself in every possible way. He has done more than any other six men in her Majesty's dominions, and is one of the best, noblest, and truest that breathes. "While not on active service or on sick leave, he has been serving his country, humanity, science, and civilization in other ways, by opening up lands hitherto unknown, and trying to do good wherever he went. He was the pioneer for all other living African travellers. He first attempted to open up the Sources of the Nile. He 'opened the oyster for the rest to take the pearl'--his Lake Tanganyika is the head basin of the Nile.