He was an old man, they said—hideously ugly. They believed, evidently, that he had horns and hoofs. But no one confessed that he had over seen him.
The day after my arrival, I went again to the palazzo. The same old woman examined and admitted me, evidently without recognizing me as the audacious stranger who had penetrated to the black and solemn chamber. She told me that I could not go into the palace, because the Marquis was living there, and would not go to Rome for several weeks; but I had her permission to stroll in the garden.
It was even more ruinous than before. Everywhere reigned the same desolation and sadness—doubly sad and desolate now that I knew the story. Yet everywhere in Italy you feel the possibility of such tragedies. Robert Browning's poem of "My Last Duchess" and Beckford's tale of the old woman near Naples are simple studies from life. The old villas and gardens crumbling in that hot southern sun are like memorials of the fierce excesses of hot southern passion. Love, hate, enthusiasm, revenge, despair, dark eyes, black hair, the stiletto, ignorance and mystery, ambition and superstition—these are the quick-glancing threads of which that life is spun. Venice explains Venice. The Council of Ten, the Bridge of Sighs, the Piombi, Marino Faliero, as well as Titian and Don Juan, are all bred of that silence, splendor, and isolation.
Suddenly, as I turned into a neglected ilex-path, I met an old man. He might have been seventy years of age; he was still erect, and long white hairs clustered around his cold, hard face. He paused courteously, saluted me with dignity, and bade me good day. Perceiving from my reply that I was a foreigner, he stopped and fell into conversation. In all that he said the shrewd observation of the man of the world was evident. He was familiar with the current gossip, spoke of society in Rome, of the belles and the beauties. Passing to pictures and the subjects that most interest strangers, he showed himself a judicious critic and connoisseur. Of certain pictures he spoke with a kind of cold ardor that was very singular, and as I mentioned one that I had seen in the palazzo Mazzo in Rome, he discovered that his friend, the Cardinal Mazzo, was also a friend of mine, and imme-
