When peoples who have long lived in a state of backwardness, have a sudden fit of cleanliness, in imitation of more advanced nations, they are apt to clean the outside walls only, and to leave all their accustomed filth hidden behind them.  I mention these terrible prisons because, during the visit of the squadron to Naples, I was guilty of snatching two distinguished men, both much sought after by the police on account of the offensive opinions I have already spoken of, from their clutches.  M. Lutteroth, the secretary to our embassy, went and fetched them at night from their hiding-place, and I put them on board one of my ships, which was sailing at once for Tunis.  I have no recollection of their names.  And indeed that was not the only instance in which we saved people compromised in Italian politics, out of sheer humanity.  Long after the incident of which I speak, a Piedmontese officer, who performed brilliant services in our African army, side by side with my brothers, begged Aumale to put him into communication with our mother.  He then conjured her, as a woman and a Neapolitan, to save a prisoner, who was seriously compromised (whether his relative or his friend I no longer recollect), from the gallows, and my mother wrote a most pressing letter to King Ferdinand at his request.  The King, who had always preserved the tenderest and most respectful affection for his aunt, and glad also, I make no doubt (for he was a kind man), to have an opportunity of setting mercy above arguments of state, granted my mother the pardon she craved.  The name of the man thus spared was Nicotera.

This taken for granted, as they say in mathematics, I hie me back to my squadron at Spezzia, a splendid bay, which at that time we were the only people to use as an anchorage, but in which the Italians have now established a great naval arsenal.  The bay is very safe and convenient for drill and practice.  But I have one fault to find with it.  I never took my ships there without an epidemic of influenza colds breaking out, and affecting three or four hundred men in each crew.  These outbreaks are due, in my opinion, to the high wooded mountains which shadow the bay on the western side, and to its sudden transitions from the most scorching sunshine to very cool shade.  Our ships attracted several tourists, and one morning I saw a party appear on board, consisting, amongst other people, of the Marquis de Boissy, a witty and restless French peer, married to the Comtesse Giuccioli, of Byronian memory, and of the Marquis Oldoini, accompanied by an exquisite young lady, his daughter, who afterwards became that superb beauty, the Comtesse de Castiglione.

M. de Boissy tried to talk politics to me and to reiterate the famous phrase “Be strong.”  But whenever anybody began to talk to me about questions of home politics, with which I had nothing to do, my partial deafness always became complete.