aware that at the bidding of Bilkins it is our duty to fall down
and worship the Neapolitans, we make bold very much to prefer the
fishing people of our French watering-place - especially since our
last visit to Naples within these twelvemonths, when we found only
four conditions of men remaining in the whole city: to wit,
lazzaroni, priests, spies, and soldiers, and all of them beggars;
the paternal government having banished all its subjects except the
rascals.

But we can never henceforth separate our French watering-place from
our own landlord of two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, citizen and
town-councillor. Permit us to have the pleasure of presenting M.
Loyal Devasseur.

His own family name is simply Loyal; but, as he is married, and as
in that part of France a husband always adds to his own name the
family name of his wife, he writes himself Loyal Devasseur. He
owns a compact little estate of some twenty or thirty acres on a
lofty hill-side, and on it he has built two country houses, which
he lets furnished. They are by many degrees the best houses that
are so let near our French watering-place; we have had the honour
of living in both, and can testify. The entrance-hall of the first
we inhabited was ornamented with a plan of the estate, representing
it as about twice the size of Ireland; insomuch that when we were
yet new to the property (M. Loyal always speaks of it as 'La
propriete') we went three miles straight on end in search of the
bridge of Austerlitz - which we afterwards found to be immediately
outside the window. The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another part
of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about two leagues from
the little dining-room, we sought in vain for a week, until,