'A filthy nation, added the second. 'Ro exclaimed the third, meaning to say 'robbers'; but he was not allowed to finish the word: a tempest of soldi and half-lire descended upon their heads and shoulders, and leaped upon the table and the floor with a demoniacal noise. All three sprang up in a rage, looked up, and received another handful of coppers in their faces.

A provision was added for the payment of fifty lire per gross ton for construction of war-ships, and eight and a half-lire per horsepower for engines, nine and a half lire per quintal for boilers, and eleven lire per quintal for other apparatus, to be used in war-ships.

In that assembly a man who plunges half-lire pieces on every spin of the ball is a man who means business; and the dilettanti soon let me press through to a stool at the table. Going on pair and impair or the colour was not to my taste.