Of the truth of the story I have related I have been assured by several respectable persons in Naples.  About the middle of May I was at the spot where the murder was said to have been committed.  It was on the borders of the lake of Agnano.  We reached it by a hollow winding road, cut deep through the hills and rocks thousands of years ago.  It was a pretty and solitary spot; a neat pavilion of the royal family stood on the shore, and the air was fragrant with the blossoms of the white clover and the innumerable flowers which the soil of Italy, for a short season before the summer heats and drought, pours forth so profusely.  The lake is evidently the crater of an old volcano:  it lies in a perfect bowl of hills, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical decomposition in the earth below has not yet ceased.  Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the famous Grotto del Cane, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a little money from the foreigners who come to visit it.  You may be sure I was careful not to trim any of the myrtles with my penknife.

But to return to Tuscany—­it is after all little better than an Austrian province, like the other countries of Italy.  The Grand Duke is a near relative of the Emperor; he has the rank of colonel in the Austrian service, and a treaty of offense and defense obliges him to take part in the wars of Austria to the extent of furnishing ten thousand soldiers.  It is well understood that he is watched by the agents of the Austrian Government here, who form a sort of high police, to which he and his cabinet are subject, and that he would not venture upon any measure of national policy, nor even displace or appoint a minister, without the consent of Metternich.

The birth of a son to the Grand Duke has been signalized, I have just learned, by a display of princely munificence.  Five thousand crowns have been presented to the Archbishop who performed the ceremony of christening the child; the servants of the ducal household have received two months’ wages, in addition to their usual salary; five hundred young women have received marriage portions of thirty crowns each; all the articles of property at the great pawnbroking establishments managed by goverment, pledged for a less sum than four livres, have been restored to the owners without payment; and finally, all persons confined for larceny and other offences of a less degree than homicide and other enormous crimes, have been liberated and turned loose upon society again.  The Grand Duke can well afford to be generous, for from a million and three hundred thousand people he draws, by taxation, four millions of crowns annually, of which a million only is computed to be expended in the military and civil expenses of his government.  The remainder is of course applied to keeping up the state of a prince and to the enriching of his family.  He passes, you know, for one of the richest potentates in Europe.