Among Other Things, He Had Contrived An Original Project For Reviving The Lemon Industry Of His Country, Which, Though It Involved A Few Tariff Modifications - "A Mere Detail" - Struck Me As Amazingly Effective And Ingenious.

The local deputy, it seems, shared my view, for he had undertaken to bring it before the notice of Parliament.

What was it?

I have forgotten!

So we discussed the world, while the music played under the starlit southern night.

It must have been midnight ere a final frenzied galop on the part of the indefatigable band announced the close of the entertainment. I walked a few paces beside the lame "proprietor" who, supported on the arms of his nephews, made his way to the spot where the cabs were waiting - his rheumatism, he explained, obliging him to drive. How he had enjoyed walking as a youth, and what pleasure it would now have given him to protract, during a promenade to my hotel, our delightful conversation! But infirmities teach us to curtail our pleasures, and many things that seem natural to man's bodily configuration are found to be unattainable. He seldom left his rooms; the stairs - the diabolical stairs! Would I at least accept his card and rest assured how gladly he would receive me and do all in his power to make my stay agreeable?

That card has gone the way of numberless others which the traveller in Southern Europe gathers about him. I have also forgotten the old man's name. But the palazzo in which he lived bore a certain historical title which happened to be very familiar to me.

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