and not daring to come down till I was driven to it by the jeers of the
on-lookers. But I learnt most of all by observation, and from the outset
I had that indescribable thing that nobody can teach another, the
seafaring instinct. Our cruise was a pleasant one, and our stays in port
were interesting. At Ajaccio I came upon more public functions, and was
the hero of a Bonapartist demonstration. I was borne as though in
triumph to the house where Napoleon was born, where I was received by a
very old Signor Ramolino, brother to Madame Letitia. In common with my
sisters, who drew pictures of Napoleon all over the place, I professed
the greatest admiration for the great warrior. So I asked his uncle for
some souvenir of him, and he presented me with a red armchair, out of
the room in which he was born.

After a visit to the Dey of Algiers, the last representative of those
Barbary Moors who were the "Terror of the Seas," as the Muette de
Portici has it, I received at Leghorn an invitation from the Grand Duke
of Tuscany to come to Florence, and was taken thither by the French
Minister, M. de Ganay, a charming man. There was nothing that excellent
good Grand Duke and his family did not do for me while I staid at the
Pitti Palace, and the only acknowledgment I could make of it all was to
turn my schoolboy talents to constructing a jointed jumping jack, that
turned head over heels, for one of the young princesses whom we used to
call the Archduchess Mimi, and who afterwards married Prince Luitpold of
Bavaria. I returned on board the Arthemise full of gratitude for my
reception, and of admiration for the monuments and artistic marvels I
had seen at Florence and Pisa and Pistoja, and in which, in spite of my
youth, I had taken the deepest interest.

At Naples I found fresh delights in the midst of my mother's family and
my young cousins, of both sexes, one of whom, Antonietta, an admirably