Another piece of intelligence was certainly to be expected, but now it has come afflicts us much.  Poor Johnny Lockhart!  The boy is gone whom we have made so much of.  I could not have borne it better than I now do, and I might have borne it much worse.[509]

* * * * *

I went one evening to the Opera to see that amusement in its birthplace, which is now so widely received over Europe.  The Opera House is superb, but can seldom be quite full.  On this night, however, it was; the guards, citizens, and all persons dependent on the Court, or having anything to win or lose by it, are expected to take places liberally, and applaud with spirit.  The King bowed much on entrance, and was received in a popular manner, which he has no doubt deserved, having relaxed many of his father’s violent persecutions against the Liberals, made in some degree an amnesty, and employed many of this character.  He has made efforts to lessen his expenses; but then he deals in military affairs, and that swallows up his savings, and Heaven only knows whether he will bring [Neapolitans] to fight, which the Martinet system alone will never do.  His health is undermined by epileptic fits, which, with his great corpulence, make men throw their thoughts on his brother Prince Charles.  It is a pity.  The King is only two-and-twenty years old.

The Opera bustled off without any remarkable music, and, so far as I understand the language, no poetry; and except the coup d’oeil, which was magnificent, it was poor work.  It was on the subject of Constantine and Crispus—­marvellous good matter, I assure you.  I came home at half-past nine, without waiting the ballet, but I was dog-sick of the whole of it.  Went to the Studij to-day.  I had no answer to my memorial to the Minister of the Interior, which it seems is necessary to make any copies from the old romances.  I find it is an affair of State, and Monsieur ----- can only hope it will be granted in two or three days;—­to a man that may leave Naples to-morrow!  He offers me a loan of what books I need, Annals included, but this is also a delay of two or three days.  I think really the Italian men of letters do not know the use of time made by those of other places, but I must have patience.  In the course of my return home I called, by advice of my valet de place, at a bookseller’s, where he said all the great messieurs went for books.  It had very little the air of a place of such resort, being kept in a garret above a coach-house.  Here some twenty or thirty odd volumes were produced by an old woman, but nothing that was mercantile, so I left them for Lorenzo’s learned friends.  And yet I was sorry too, for the lady who showed them to me was very [civil], and, understanding that I was the famous Chevalier, carried her kindness as far as I could desire.  The Italians understand nothing of being in a hurry, but perhaps it is their way.[510]