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string I had touched upon, a theme in a minor key, upon
which the good lady contrived to execute an endless number
of variations and voluntaries. She began by replying,
He is better than he deserves to be! ? Stingy miser, every
thing under lock and key! What a situation, not to be able
to offer any thing to a person of your merit! But all his
cunning- shall avail him nothing.”—Here the ingenious Don-
na Anna proceeded to the buffet, by introducing a knife
through the interstices at the top and bottom of one of the
folding-doors, shifted the bolts, and vigorously pulling both
wings, readily opened the buffet, in spite of the pretended
security of the lock. Cakes and diluted raspberry syrup were
now in abundance, and the latter proved an excellent sum-
mer refreshment.—“ It’s of his own manufacture,” continued
Donna Anna. “ He is as clever an apothecary as any in
the kingdom, earns a mint of money, and yet starves his wife.
When I ask him for cash, he stares at me as if the house were
on fire, enquires if what he gave me yesterday was gone al-
ready, and, in his generosity, parts with a few cavalli*;
not, however, without the most serious injunction to be more
saving. He and the little one dine at the shop in town on
good cheer, while the old woman and myself must put up with
all sorts of vile trash of his own catering. Lettuce, cucum-
bers, onions, and stale maccaroni, which he knows I loath the
sight of, are the order of the day with us; and, to whet my
appetite for these dainties, he has the generosity every now
and then to bring home a box of stomachic pills, which I
fling out at the window as soon as he has turned his back.
I interrupted the flow of tlie injured fair one’s eloquence,
by assuring her that the appearance of health in her coun-
tenance and person indicated by no means the abstemious
regimen she complained of; and that, at all events, Don Ig-
nazio

Neapolitan copper coin.