Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/314

300 he felt also a strong desire to defeat the mysterious prophecy that the meeting should take place. Into this wish Merton readily entered. The young men agreed to be absent from Naples that day. Early in the morning they mounted their horses, and took the road to Baise. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if Signor Zicci sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of the once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.

They passed by Isabel's house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of pausing there, and threading the grotto of Pausilippo they wound by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the opposite road which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late at noon when they arrived at the former of these places. Here they halted to dine; for Merton had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at Portici, and Merton was a bon vivant.

They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an awning. Merton was more than usually gay; he pressed the Lacryma upon his friend, and conversed gaily.

"Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zicci in one of his predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter."

"The Ides are come, not gone."

"Tush! if he is a soothsayer, you are not Caesar. It is your vanity that makes you credulous: thank heaven, I do not think myself of such importance, that the operations of nature should be changed in order to frighten me."

"But why should the operations of nature be changed: there may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of—a philosophy that discovers the secrets of nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses."

"Ah! you suppose Zicci to be a prophet—a reader of the future; perhaps an associate of Genii and Spirits!"

"I know not what to conjecture; but I see no reason why he should seek, even if an impostor, to impose on me. An impostor must have some motive for deluding us—either ambition or avarice. I am neither rich nor powerful; Zicci spends more in a week than I do in a year. Nay, a Neapolitan banker told me, that the sums invested by Zicci in his hands, were enough to purchase half the lands of the Neapolitan noblesse."

"Grant this to be true; do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others? Zicci has a moral ostentation, and the same character that makes him rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at even by a humble Englishman."

Here the landlord, a little fat oily fellow, came up with a fresh bottle