In contrast with these cattle, what polished and courtly gentlemen were the sailors and firemen!  As for our captain, he would in any company have won notice for his gentle and high-bred way; in his place at the head of the table among these Frenchmen, he seemed to me the finest gentleman I had ever seen.  He had spent his whole life at sea, and had voyaged in all parts of the world except Japan, where he meant some day, he said, to go.  He had been first a cabin-boy on a little Genoese schooner, and he had gradually risen to the first place on a sailing-vessel, and now he had been selected to fill a commander’s post on this line of steamers. (It is an admirable line of boats, not belonging I believe to the Italian government, but much under its control, leaving Genoa every day for Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, and Ancona, on the Adriatic coast.) The captain had sailed a good deal in American waters, but chiefly on the Pacific coast, trading from the Spanish republican ports to those of California.  He had been in that State during its effervescent days, when every thing foul floated to the top, and I am afraid he formed there but a bad opinion of our people, though he was far too courteous to say outright any thing of this sort.

He had very fine, shrewd blue eyes, a lean, weather-beaten, kindly face, and a cautious way of saying things.  I hardly expected him to turn out so red-hot a Democrat as he did on better acquaintance, but being a warm friend of man myself, I was not sorry.  Garibaldi was the beginning and ending of his political faith, as he is with every enthusiastic Italian.  The honest soul’s conception of all concrete evil was brought forth in two words, of odd enough application.  In Europe, and Italy more particularly, true men have suffered chiefly from this form of evil, and the captain evidently could conceive of no other cause of suffering anywhere.  We were talking of the American war, and when the captain had asked the usual question, “Quando finira mai questa guerra?” and I had responded as usual, “Ah, ci vuol pazienza!” the captain gave a heavy sigh, and turning his head pensively aside, plucked his grapes from the cluster a moment in silence.

Then he said:  “You Americans are in the habit of attributing this war to slavery.  The cause is not sufficient.”

I ventured to demur and explain.  “No,” said the captain, “the cause is not sufficient.  We Italians know the only cause which could produce a war like this.”

I was naturally anxious to be instructed in the Italian theory, hoping it might be profounder than the English notion that we were fighting about tariffs.

The captain frowned, looked at me carefully, and then said:—­

“In this world there is but one cause of mischief—­the Jesuits.”

III.