A young monk of the order of the Recollects who called himself Friar Stephano of Belun, and had obtained a free passage from the devout Captain Alban, joined me as we landed and enquired whether I felt sick.

“Reverend father, I am unhappy.”

“You will forget all your sorrow, if you will come and dine with me at the house of one of our devout friends.”

I had not broken my fast for thirty-six hours, and having suffered much from sea-sickness during the night, my stomach was quite empty.  My erotic inconvenience made me very uncomfortable, my mind felt deeply the consciousness of my degradation, and I did not possess a groat!  I was in such a miserable state that I had no strength to accept or to refuse anything.  I was thoroughly torpid, and I followed the monk mechanically.

He presented me to a lady, saying that he was accompanying me to Rome, where I intend to become a Franciscan.  This untruth disgusted me, and under any other circumstances I would not have let it pass without protest, but in my actual position it struck me as rather comical.  The good lady gave us a good dinner of fish cooked in oil, which in Orsara is delicious, and we drank some exquisite refosco.  During our meal, a priest happened to drop in, and, after a short conversation, he told me that I ought not to pass the night on board the tartan, and pressed me to accept a bed in his house and a good dinner for the next day in case the wind should not allow us to sail; I accepted without hesitation.  I offered my most sincere thanks to the good old lady, and the priest took me all over the town.  In the evening, he brought me to his house where we partook of an excellent supper prepared by his housekeeper, who sat down to the table with us, and with whom I was much pleased.  The refosco, still better than that which I had drunk at dinner, scattered all my misery to the wind, and I conversed gaily with the priest.  He offered to read to me a poem of his own composition, but, feeling that my eyes would not keep open, I begged he would excuse me and postpone the reading until the following day.

I went to bed, and in the morning, after ten hours of the most profound sleep, the housekeeper, who had been watching for my awakening, brought me some coffee.  I thought her a charming woman, but, alas!  I was not in a fit state to prove to her the high estimation in which I held her beauty.

Entertaining feelings of gratitude for my kind host, and disposed to listen attentively to his poem, I dismissed all sadness, and I paid his poetry such compliments that he was delighted, and, finding me much more talented than he had judged me to be at first, he insisted upon treating me to a reading of his idylls, and I had to swallow them, bearing the infliction cheerfully.  The day passed off very agreeably; the housekeeper surrounded me with the kindest attentions—­a proof that she was smitten with me; and, giving way to that pleasing