IT WAS THE DAWN OF JUNE 24, 1799. There were woodwinds in the rigging, and the creak of a piccolo in the timbers. The whole orchestra was starting up: it was becoming day. There was no curtain to be drawn this time, no cherubs, but merely a scrim through which it would be possible to perceive that comedy called Justice. The pumiced decks were swabbed down. As the first light hit them they began to steam. An aureole of sea gulls came out to meet the boats, wailed, and whirled back again. The ship’s bell rang for the chorus to come in and take its places. That excellent piece, Monti’s Aristodemo, or The Monarchy Restored, was about to be put on again, though Ferdinand was still in Palermo, pulling at his lower lip and starting hares.

Emma had risen early. In a shovel bonnet alla marinara, trimmed with daisies made of cockleshells, a white princess dress à la Régence with an exceptionally high bodice, and yellow slippers patterned after a man’s evening pumps, she had given some thought to her tournure, and so had no doubts, but drew about her in flattering folds an expansive cashmere shawl. The shawl was designed to suggest Mercy. She knew what Justice was.

In the fifth act, the King, struck by a dramatic change of heart, a deus ex machina, ascends his throne, casts out the Grand Vizier, unites the lovers—one of whom always turns out to be his long-lost son or daughter—strips the villain, enriches the rest, and it doesn’t matter, because afterward everybody comes out to accept the general applause. Since you have seen it all a hundred times before, there is no need to worry. There is time to bow to one’s friends and drink hot chocolate. It will come out right in the end. Or, if the performance is English, and therefore The Beggar’s Opera, it is only play-acting; at the last moment, the King’s messenger will arrive with a pardon. She had seen that, too.

She had known they would see Naples again. That’s why she had been so impatient at Palermo, for some operas are a little long.

Just the same, they had lost their houses, she had been cast out, so let them hang; it was such a dreadful thing to have done to Sir William at his age.

She stood at the rail and watched the waves, so small they might have been theatrical rollers, the sun a magnesium flare, and the splendid spectacle of eighteen ship of the line, gun hatches open, moving through silence with implacable certainty as they began to enfilade the gap between Capri and Ischia, in order to invest the city.

It was not scenery. It was décor. There were shadows on the sea. The scrim became transparent. Vesuvius became visible, and all the villages along the shore sprang up like footlights.

Nelson stood watching her. On board ship, he was the great man. Anywhere else, he was all at sea. Rather shyly—like a boy at his first ball—he went forward to say good morning, a thin, pale, jaundiced, bilious, one-eyed, one-armed, balding little man with a limp.

Emma, turning, saw neither this puny creature, a mere human, nor the genius inside, but instead that more imposing object, the Hero of the Nile, the friend of the Duke of Clarence, Admiral Nelson, their Nelson, Baron Nelson, and who knew what further distinctions were to come.

“Isn’t it exciting!” she said.

He thought she meant the deployment of the ships. “Oh yes, it always is.” She had a feeling for these things. She understood him.

He felt at his ease, a thing he seldom felt with women. “Dear Emma,” he said. He had himself become plummy. He was ripe to fall.

“For a moment you startled me,” she said, putting him at a distance and watching Mother Carey’s chickens come home to roost.

She had become a mistress of the forms. For harmless boyish moments when they were together, she called him Horatio; for public scenes, Lord Nelson; for intimate dinners, My dear Lord Nelson; when he seemed dangerous, Our dear Lord Nelson, which reminded him of Sir William.

Poor Nelson, thought Sir William, who had just come topside. He has not the sophistication for Emma’s simplicity, overlooking that these vain creatures can do anything with mirrors, whether they realize it or not.

It was Emma, first, who spotted the white flags flying on the castles.

“Haul down that flag of truce!” she shouted. “There can be no truce with rebels!” It was her military mood, borrowed from Maria Carolina, who, though she had all Maria Theresa’s habits of mind, lacked the mind itself. Maria Theresa, like most commanding women, had produced a nursery of noddles and sticklebacks. Impotence, neglect and a foolish husband had left Maria Carolina with an insatiable craving for glitter and revenge. So Emma must have these things, too.

Sir William and Nelson looked glumly at the flags. They must send a messenger to Cardinal Ruffo.

*

It was two in the afternoon before the fleet could drop anchor, in battle formation, before the city. “Forty-three fathoms!” shouted the boy with the lead, yet it looked as though they were in deeper than that. The bay was a litter of small boats, for everyone had come out to pay his respects, fling garlands, and cuddle up to the winning side, though until the forts fell the city had not yet fallen. Through a telescope, Sir William could see that the statue of a giant opposite the palace had a large red-flannel liberty cap on its head.

A cutter came alongside with the mail pouch, containing news from both England and Sicily.

“The Colossus is foundered,” said Sir William, got up, looked dazed, and lurched below.

“It is the heat,” said Emma.

But Nelson had paused in his own correspondence. The Colossus had indeed foundered, off the Scilly Roads, when almost home.

“It was the transport ship,” he explained, “with his antiques and pictures.”

“Oh well,” said Emma, as though to say, Is that all? “He can buy more. They dig more up every day.” She was absorbed in the dear Queen’s letters, and some gazettes had come with the new French fashions in them. She did want to look at those.

“Perhaps I should go down to him,” said Nelson.

Emma said she would go herself.

*

Sir William was standing in the wardroom, alone.

“I am so sorry, William,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter. It could not be helped.” His eyes seemed out of focus.

“When we are settled again, you can collect more. There does always seem to be more,” said Emma. “The French cannot have taken everything.”

“Damn the French!” snapped William, who looked pasty. Poor old gentleman, apparently it was a shock, “Damn them I say.”

It seemed so much emotion from so peripheral a cause. “Shall I stay?” she asked.

“No, I’d rather be alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” said Sir William bitterly.

She went away. He would be better after a while. And really, there was so much to do.

*

That night the city, or those parts of it not still in rebel hands, burned with thousands of lanterns, which made almost enough light to have supper by.

“Where is Sir William?” asked Emma. She wanted to cheer him up.

Nobody knew.

She half rose, but Nelson, with an odd look, said that he would go instead. She was much relieved. What was going on was far beyond her, though to be sure, it had no doubt been a very hard blow. Sir William was quite right: damn the French. But it was not an irreparable loss.

*

He was still sitting in the wardroom. Someone had lit a lamp, but he seemed not to notice it.

“Greville has been able to salvage only a box with the body of Admiral Lord Sheldam in it. What business had he there? He was not a vase. Why should he be shipped as a vase?” demanded Sir William.

“Sailors are superstitious about bodies aboard ship. He died in Lisbon and had to be sent home.”

“Nonetheless, he was not a vase,” said Sir William idiotically. He had loved the world. To him there was only one tragedy: that one day very soon—no matter how long from now, it will be very soon—we shall be dead and unable to see it any more. But that is a slow tragedy, and this news was sudden. A man of almost seventy can do nothing suddenly.

“I do not understand,” said Nelson, coming closer. “But sir, I am sorry. Truly sorry.”

Sir William shot an angry, defensive look at him, and then saw that, by God, he was. This so startled his natural reserve, that despite himself, he leaned up against this most unexpected present male friend and wept.

What can be worse than an old man’s tears? They are so beyond the hour uncorked; the wine is vinegar, no matter what the year.

With that almost female sensibility with which he could sometimes smooth life’s rougher moments, Nelson reached over and blew the lantern out, and while he waited for Sir William to take hold of himself again, thought most oddly of the Reverend Edmund, his father, at Round Hill, who must be almost eighty now.

*

“Is he all right?”

“Of course he’s all right,” said Nelson irritably, totally unaware that he had just earned carte blanche, for there was nothing he wished to do.

Emma, who had noticed a look in his eyes which she had sometimes caught in Sir William’s when she knew she had done nothing wrong, looked at the lights in the bay and said, “Oh dear”—and after a while—“but he wants no supper?”

“No, he wants no supper,” said Nelson, perplexed, he did not know by what. He did not like this bay. It was too sensuous. It had ghosts in it.

Aware of Emma waiting for him to speak again, he turned to look at the headlands instead.

*

The next day Sir William was himself again in so far as appearances go, which are perhaps intents. The tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, so we are told, wrote history as well as tragedy, and besides, his tragedies won no prizes. So Sir William sensibly sat in the sun and wrote dispatches home.

Nelson countermanded the armistice by signal. He would give no quarter to the French. They were a greedy, mangy, vainglorious and more than usually time-serving self-seeking race. There are races which cannot help their not being English. He understood that and could even sympathize. But the French seemed not to care. In short, he did not like them.

“Who is that lout?” he demanded.

That lout was Pallio, a disreputable scoundrel of fifty odd in tattered tight candy-stripe pantaloons, a blue military coat, and curiously enough, an immaculately frilled and well-starched shirt front with jeweled studs.

“He says he can keep order,” said Emma proudly.

“He does not look as though he could keep the Sabbath.”

“But everybody knows Pallio. He’s head of the lazzaroni. He says he has ninety thousand men. All they need is arms.”

“Why can’t he come in the daytime, like anybody else?”

“He sleeps in the daytime.”

“Humph,” said Nelson. “What do you say, Sir William?”

“He is head of the lazzaroni, certainly,” said Sir William, who, if he would not condone needless slaughter, was not in the mood to prevent it.

As far as Nelson could see, a few less Neapolitans would do no harm, no matter what side they were on. Palermo had taught him to Sicilify his conscience. Either the fellow would maintain order, or by morning there would be fewer among whom it would have to be maintained. “I shall give the fellow his guns,” said Nelson.

*

“As Lord Nelson is now telling Lady Hamilton what he wishes to say to the Queen, you will probably know from the Queen more than I do of Lord Nelson’s intentions,” said Sir William smoothly, writing to General Acton. The less they knew of each other’s intentions the better, since they all intended, except for poor muddling Emma, the same thing.

Emma, half wakened by the sounds of shooting and a wail or two across the midnight water, at first alarmed, thought drowsily, It must be Pallio maintaining order, and went to sleep again. In the morning there was no one to tell her otherwise. We maintain order by telling others to do it. How they do it has nothing to do with the maintenance of order, any more than the maintenance has anything to do with order itself. And we, of course, are concerned with order only.

Next morning the Cardinal came aboard, dressed not in his robes—which he had left in the Cathedral vestry after having discovered that he had celebrated unnecessarily a Godgiven truce—but in a purple, which is to say a red, soutane, brown riding boots, and spurs. Nelson was annoyed. He did not like to have his decks scratched.

The man did not look like a proud prelate. What pride he had arose from family, not faith. He looked like a soldier, sore tried, saddlesore and weary.

There were words.

However, since the Cardinal did not understand English, and Nelson could not understand the Cardinal’s French, and the subject of their debate was Italian, Sir William hoped not so much to bring them together as to keep them apart, and needed all his phlegm to do it; odd though it is that that term which among the poor means only oysterhocking, in a gentleman—if not a by-product of that weather which we emigrate to avoid—denotes swallowing hard.

According to Galen, the faculties of the soul follow the temperaments of the body. Perhaps so. Sir William coped. Phlegm was as inbred in him as ennui is in a Frenchman, or terribilità in an Italian, qualities which gave the first jurisprudence, the second wit, and the third lawsuits. God not only tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, he shears the lamb.

So though the Cardinal left in a temper, to debate with his allies; and Pallio had torn down the Cardinal’s edicts and eviscerated whom he pleased; and though the Queen had written to say that a general massacre would cause her no pain; even though men might be savages, there must be no Mohawks here. The consul at sunset, who has sacked whole provinces, must still maintain the Pax Romana. To do so is both his duty and the source of his year’s wealth.

“He was insolent. He must be paid in his own coin,” said Nelson.

Sir William thought not. “It is justice,” he said. “For justice, one need pay only one’s lawyer. Anything else is called a bribe and throws the case out of court. He said that even if it had been better not to capitulate, we were obliged to honor a treaty once made. Honor it we must. He is quite right. Our only choice is between the breech and the observance.”

“It will pain the Queen.”

“The Queen’s capacity for pain is almost infinite. There is always room for more. If it is not this, it is that. It is her pleasure,” said Sir William.

Cardinal Ruffo was a gentleman and a Prince of the Church. Between the crucifix on one side of the bed and the gun on the other, they could not arrest him. He could raise whole armies from that bed, whichever side he rose on.

“Lords spiritual should not be allowed to fight,” said Nelson primly. “Mariolatry has marred his manners.”

“His patron is St. Anthony of Padua.”

“What difference does it make? They all come from the same womb,” snapped Nelson, to whom even Charles the Martyr smacked of popery, and sent a declaration—to be forwarded by the Cardinal—that the rebels should surrender to the royal mercy.

They might as well surrender to the sea kraken itself. The Cardinal refused to forward it, and clambered aboard again, talking a blue streak, of which Sir William dared to translate only every third and least blue word.

Nelson gave up. “An admiral is no match in talking with a cardinal,” he said, and wrote a note of hand, to explain he would not compromise. Royalty does not compromise. Neither does an admiral. With his own principles, perhaps; with those of others, never. Every man has his limitations; those of Nelson were greatness. He did not propose either to be bilked or balked.

Ruffo went ashore and told the French to flee by land, but since he had beaten them, they did not trust him and would not go.

The whole world came aboard to pay its respects. Emma had petitions for mercy by the handful; Sir William, petitions for place. Like children after the pantry, the strongest manage to clamber on top of the others to get the honey, for without a general scrimmage, no man could reach so high. We all have to scramble on somebody else’s shoulders in this world, to accomplish anything, and while they are beneath us, we may as well push them down. In peaceful times, this natural process is a mere decorous shuffle in felt slippers; in time of trouble, it is a kick in the ribs administered by iron boots. The success of any government may be determined by the length of the queue. When the ranks are broken, every man is doomed.

Sir William appealed to reputation. “Fall in, save honor, and you may safely leave revenge to the King,” he said. It was a toss-up whether the Cardinal would be arrested or not, but the coin came down a medal, new minted, with Nelson’s head on one side and the Goddess of Clemency on the other, Britannia cowering behind her shield.

“Nelson is resolved to do nothing to break the armistice,” wrote Sir William.

The Cardinal sighed with relief and went off to the Church of the Carmine, to give thanks. “Different characters express themselves in different ways,” he said in his thank-you note, repeating what Sir William had just written to him. And then, thinking over the singular perfection of this trite apothegm, and adding it to his own knowledge of the King and Queen, he prudently resigned, and so kept his honor intact.

With honor intact, they might now do as they pleased.

The King disavowed the capitulation.

“Finally, my dear Milady, I recommend Lord Nelson to treat Naples as if it were a rebellious city in Ireland which had behaved in such a manner,” wrote the Queen, thus raising a purely British but inexorable ghost, and apparently ignorant that the Hydra grows new heads.

Caracciolo’s must fall first.

Nothing loath, Nelson intercepted the fleeing rebels and clapped them in close confinement on polaccas, where they could await the King’s pleasure like animals rounded up for a grand battu. It was a simple alternative of surrender and be hanged, or hang out and be shot, as far as he was concerned.

Caracciolo was not so much betrayed as sold by one of his own servants, who though loyal, had needed the money, and was brought aboard the Foudroyant at nine in the morning. He had disguised himself as a peasant, an unwise choice, for though a uniform stays violence, a peasant provokes it. There could be no question of his guilt. He had changed sides and chosen the losing one; what else is guilt? It was a clear-cut case in a most indistinct country.

The court-martial sat at ten, and the man had been condemned by noon and was to be executed the next day, which, since the naval day began at noon, gave him five hours to live.

“But you cannot hang him,” said Emma. “We know him.”

“It is out of my hands,” said Nelson, which was true enough, for he had just signed and dispatched the death warrant.

The female mind does not believe that any act is ever final. That is what makes Christians of them; they believe in reprieve. She begged again.

“He has had his trial, and has been a trial to many,” said Nelson.

“There is mercy.”

“His death will no doubt be a mercy, and is in itself merciful,” said Sir William.

“He is a Catholic. Cannot he at least have a priest? He will want the comfort of Confession.”

“Why bother to confess what cannot be denied?” asked Nelson, who had found the Cardinal quite enough priest for one day.

“Emma,” said Sir William, “I think you had best go to your cabin. These things must be done, therefore they cannot be undone.”

Emma went. She did not understand men.

“It is a bad business, all the same,” said Sir William.

“He was a bad man,” said Nelson, pulling out his watch.

Caracciolo was transferred to his former flagship, La Minerva, and hanged at five for his unwisdom; the body was weighted and cut down to fall in the sea.

*

Nelson and the Hamiltons were entertaining Lord Northwick to dinner. At the foot of the table was a roast pig. As the head was cut off they heard the cannon boom from the Minerva. Emma fainted.

“Ah women,” said Nelson, “they are such delicate creatures,” though this one was uncommonly heavy to lift. Sir William helped him. This opinion, and for that matter this woman, they held in common.

She revived. Now it was over it was not so bad. She ate.

Once Caracciolo was out of the way, the King was to arrive, but the Queen was not.

“Nobody wants me there,” she said, and sent her black lists along. She recommended that the women be treated as were the men. She proposed to enlarge the scope of war. She wished to have Eleonora Pimentel’s head.

*

To give the sailors diversion, Emma had installed a harp on the deck of the Foudroyant and gave concerts in the evening.

She sang odes to Nelson mostly, which went down very well. She helped abolish the silence, and among them, only Sir William had the reserve to find nothing objectionable in the voices of silence, which can be heard across that bay, although the dead are dumb.

“The King arrived on the tenth, so now we have nothing political to think of,” said Sir William. His Britannic Majesty’s government was forced to entertain royalty, not always an easy thing to do, since there is so little, on the whole, that entertains it. Ferdinand, however, was easily amused by being allowed to shoot seabirds from the deck when not busy ordering executions and rewarding the faithful. He was stern, he was the father of his people, and the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, as he never tired of saying.

He was quite himself again. He had not learned a thing. Nor, in his opinion, had he a thing to learn. He was quite jaunty. But he would not go ashore. Since the Hamiltons and Nelson did all the work, he had nothing to do but nothing, which not only took up most of his time, but suited him.

The last group of rebels surrendered on the 3rd of Messidor.

“What day is that?” asked Nelson.

“The ninth of August.”

If we cannot be sure of the calendar, what can we believe?

Since he had disobeyed orders in order to stay at Naples, there was a good deal of talk. He did not listen. We cannot do the world’s work and listen to its chatter as well. He had not the time.

*

A fisherman came aboard to say that Caracciolo was swimming toward Naples. Man not the guns only, but also the churches. He had risen from the dead.

From the King’s cabin came something between a bellow and a scream. When they burst in, they found him down on his knees, blubbering for a priest, beating his scapular against the floor and pointing out the window.

It had sounded like a yarn. It was not. There was Caracciolo, sure enough, walking across the water rapidly, but bobbling like a buoy.

“You had better not look,” said Nelson, but of course Emma looked. The entire fleet looked.

His body had become sufficiently inflated by gas to counterbalance the weights which had been tied to his feet, but the weights kept him erect, so that, borne on a small surface current, he was indeed rapidly approaching, his arms flapping dissynchronously, his head tolling like a bell. Where not bloated, the body had gone slimy, and of course the eyes were gone. He made the worst possible kind of fetch.

The King crossed himself into a corner. “We must flee! We must flee!” he yelled. He called on St. Ferdinand. He called on both St. Anthonies. He called on St. Januarius. He called on the Blessed Virgin. He had a long list.

“I am damned!” he screamed. “Damned!”

They sent for the chaplain.

The body bumped against the hull, as though knocking to come in.

“They come back,” yowled the King. “They come back!” Poor soul, he was in torment.

Sir William looked at Nelson. Nelson looked at Emma. Emma looked at Sir William. They could none of them look at the King, who was hunching himself up toward an invisible altar, in a most unregal manner, and would next demand the Pope.

“He has only come to ask a pardon and a Christian burial,” said Sir William.

“Yes,” said the priest, who had not been able to think of anything himself.

The improvement was immediate. “You think so?” asked the King.

They thought so.

Ferdinand scrambled to his feet, dried his tears, and looked about him joyously. “Very well,” he said. “I pardon him. Have the body towed to Santa Lucia, to the church there. But I pardon nobody else. And see the others are buried properly!” And glaring at them like a boar from a thicket, he turned and went snuffling off, leaning on the priest’s arm.

*

“Probably some ships will soon be sent home from Palermo, and Emma and I shall profit of one. Every captain wishes to serve us, and no one is, I believe, more popular in the navy at this moment than Emma and I,” wrote Sir William. Except for Josiah Nisbet of course, who had come back to disapprove. “We have had the glory of stepping between the King and his subjects, to the utility of both.”

“I am going ashore,” said Emma. “Will you not come?”

“No, my dear, I think not.”

“It would do you good.”

“No, it would only do me harm,” said Sir William. “But go if you must.”

She did not understand why not, so she went.

*

Though it had not burned, the city was still smoking. It had a cordite smell. People did not seem to wish to stir about, and though shutters were open at most windows, they were not folded back.

In an empty street she came most unexpectedly across Mr. Lock, the British Consul, sitting on a cart piled high with furniture. When she spoke to him, he did not answer very civilly.

As why should he? He had come to Naples to buy up furniture cheap from the Jacobin plunder, but had been denied first passage by Sir William and Nelson, and so had missed the best bargains, and all because of this superficial, grasping and vulgar-minded woman.

And what was the furniture for?

“If one is underpaid and denied the proper privileges of one’s office, one cannot sleep on a bed of one’s own choosing,” he snapped.

“Still, you seem to have chosen a good variety,” she said, peering into the cart, and went on.

She did not go far. She could see that the Palazzo Sesso had been despoiled, the Villa Emma plundered, and Sir William’s private apartment bombed. She had no heart to see more.

“Of course it was,” said Sir William. “It was because I was so popular. One can always depend upon the goodwill of the populace, for they do as they like, and then afterward they make amends. But only if they have done you some damage first; after all, they are only human.”

Alas, a war kills not so much the living as the world they lived in. Sir William had been right. She should not have gone ashore. To have seen it swept away utterly would have been one thing; to see it in ruins, was worse.

“I saw little Mr. Lock, too. He was quite rude. I don’t know why. He was buying up furniture.”

“He is cousin by marriage to Charles James Fox, who looms large. We must have him to dinner, I suppose.”

But he could not come to dinner. He was writing a letter to certain persons about certain persons, whom he would not name, but his father could be counted upon to show the letter around.

*

“I have settled matters between the nobility and Her Majesty. She is not to see on her arrival any of her former evil counsellors, nor the women of fashion, alltho’ Ladies of the Bed-Chamber, formerly her friends and companions, who did her dishonour by their disolute life. All, all is changed. She has been very unfortunate; but she is a good woman, and has sense enough to profit by her past unhappiness, and will make for the future amende honorable for the past,” wrote Emma, sending to Greville practically the letter he had once sent Sir William about her, and with much the same attitude. She could not know that, for her own attitudes had changed. She felt secure.

“It would be charity to send me some things, for in saving all for my royal & dear friend I lost my little all,” she added. “Never mind.”

*

The 1st of August was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile. The centerpiece of the celebration was to be a barge fitted up as a Roman galley.

“And the sailors want me to sit in it, what shall I be?” asked Emma.

Sir William considered. Cleopatra would be inappropriate; Dido, for the same reasons, seemed far from wise; no one knew the name of Pompey’s wife; and Bellona seemed uncalled-for, Britannia an anachronism. “I am afraid there is not much left but Calypso. You must do the best you can.”

“What did she feel?”

“The barge will be forty yards away at least. Feel what you like, it will not be visible,” said Sir William kindly, following the myth, and so encountering Penelope, a prudish young woman with a taste for tapestry. She came from Nevis. “Be something classical. It does not matter.”

She was something classical. It did not matter.

There was a twenty-one-gun salute from all the ships at anchor, a general illumination, and the barge went by with lamps fixed on the oars, a rostral column, and two angels at the stern to hold Nelson’s portrait up. Looking through his telescope, Nelson saw dear Emma; he had wondered where she was.

Feeling the eyes of the world upon her, Emma impudently waved. An orchestra sang his praises.

“I relate this more from gratitude than vanity,” he said, writing to his wife, which was only the truth. Vanity was assuaged. It was now only gratitude that ached. In his second draft, he thought it wiser not to mention Emma. “The beauty of the whole,” he added, “was beyond description.”

*

Having condemned 105 to death, 200 to life imprisonment, 322 to shorter terms, 288 to deportation and 67 to exile, the King made ready to depart. He was constitutionally timid. Confront him with a fait accompli, and he merely looked around for the accomplices. He would be glad to get back to Palermo.

Conditions were still savage in the streets. You could see the glitter of eyes just beyond the clearing made by torchlight. The tyranny of the minority will always perish; the tyranny of the mob survives.

*

In the Cathedral, the Cardinal was up to the end of his oration:

“The King is in great spirits, and he calls me his grande maitresse,” said Emma. “Mais il est bonne d’être chez le Roi, mais mieux d’être chez soit.”

So off they sailed, with everything done and nothing settled, back to Palermo again, for Naples, like Ireland, was now no place for pleasure or recreation.

“The wind,” said Nelson, “is rising.”

But justice was done; that left only injustice, surely, to be dealt with.

*

In Weimar, Goethe, who upon his return from Italy, emboldened by the looser morals of warmer climes, had taken a woman of the people as his mistress, was drawing up a will in favor of Christiane Vulpius, so she should be provided for in case the French came. She was no Emma. She was a Kinder, Küche, and Kirche sort of woman. But she satisfied him and presented no fewer social problems than did Sir William’s excellent living gallery of sculptures. If the French came too close, he was even prepared to marry her, as the banker Récamier had married his illegitimate daughter to provide for her and then, since he had not been guillotined, had been forced to live with her rather than acknowledge her irregular birth, get an annulment, and so besmirch his name.

He was not, however, prepared to marry her just yet.