As we left Malta, the passengers all sat down to dinner; and for the first time we saw our companions for the next week. To begin with, there were three very pretty French girls. Two of these were cousins— Mademoiselle Virginia, and Mademoiselle Pauline, and they said they were going out to Bucharest as governesses; but we subsequently discovered that they were milliners, from a quantity of finery they got rid of at Smyrna. The thirds who was from Marseilles, had large dark eyes, and long black lashes, with a tinged cheek that suggested Andalusian blood. She was travelling with her brother, and another Frenchman, to whom she was engaged; both these
being employed in commerce at Marseilles. They had large beards, were great republicans, and kept very much to themselves and their cigarettes. There was also a French lady of a tolerably certain age, who had been in London, and somewhat astonished me at first with her intimate knowledge of all the leading town circles. She was too well educated for a lady’s maid, and yet wanted the repose of perfect good breeding; so that I was much puzzled to place her, until one evening she told me that she had been two seasons, several years ago, in the company of French actors at the St. James’ Theatre. We had an Englishman, who was on a speculating expedition to see if he could get some muskets into Hungary; he was also a great fdirenologist, and, generally, a thinking, determined man.
Line regiment
A young Irishman who had thrown up his commission in a line regiment, and was going to join the insurgents in the above named country, not having yet heard of their betrayal and dispersion: the amiable and intelligent Greek professor of the Harvard University in America, Mr. Sophocles, going home to his country after twenty years’ absence ; and several persons engaged in the Levant trade, whose race was as difficult to be detected as their exact occupation—their language being as complicated a jumble of odd dialects, as their luggage was of strange bags and boxes. So that, amongst them all, the conversation was tolerably lively; and when I went again upon deck after dinner, I found Malta fading away into a small blue hill upon the burnished horizon, and felt, for the first time, fairly off, on my journey to the Levant bulgaria tour.
The violet light lingered in the clear sky, high up above the east, long after the brilliant glow of sunset had died away behind the deep purple bars that flecked it as it disappeared. Then, one by one, the golden stars came out, and the bright crescent moon, looking like a symbol of the new land to which we were now hastening, was mirrored quivering in the sea, which scarcely rippled in the light evening breeze that swept over it. It was long, however, before the last gleam of light left the horizon, and I leant over the trembling stern of the old Scamcniclre, watching its gradual departure with a feeling of pleasure in gazing on what I fancied might be the direction of England, which those only can appreciate, who, at a distance from home, have recalled its dear faces around them.
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