Agatha was my confidante; she would gladly have helped me to attain my
ends, but her dignity would not allow of her giving me any overt
assistance. She promised to ask Callimena to accompany us on an excursion
to Sorento, hoping that I should succeed in my object during the night we
should have to spend there.

Before Agatha had made these arrangements, Hamilton had made similar ones
with the Duchess of Kingston, and I succeeded in getting an invitation. I
associated chiefly with the two Saxons and a charming Abbe Guliani, with
whom I afterwards made a more intimate acquaintance at Rome.

We left Naples at four o'clock in the morning, in a felucca with twelve
oars, and at nine we reached Sorrento.

We were fifteen in number, and all were delighted with this earthly
paradise.

Hamilton took us to a garden belonging to the Duke of Serra Capriola, who
chanced to be there with his beautiful Piedmontese wife, who loved her
husband passionately.

The duke had been sent there two months before for having appeared in
public in an equipage which was adjudged too magnificent. The minister
Tanucci called on the king to punish this infringement of the sumptuary
laws, and as the king had not yet learnt to resist his ministers, the
duke and his wife were exiled to this earthly paradise. But a paradise
which is a prison is no paradise at all; they were both dying of ennui,
and our arrival was balm in Gilead to them.

A certain Abbe Bettoni, whose acquaintance I had made nine years before