cause he enjoyed doing it, and he did it as if the doing conferred a distinction upon himself. Ah, very good; the young man was not blind, after all; he recognized the sun when he saw it shining. And there were others to whose notice she should like to bring the same heavenly phenomenon.

During the few remaining days of their stay other fêtes followed at other places, and it gratified Aurelia to see the Chatelaine's altered attitude. Bertha apprehended this new world keenly, she entered into it with a satisfactory readiness and self-possession, and it began to look as if she was soon to be completely at home in it and thoroughly committed to it. In nothing was this shown more clearly than in the manner with which she met Zeitgeist's suggestions for excursions- Meran being nothing if not excursional, while walks and points of view abound. Every other height for miles up and down the valley, for instance, held out its ruined castle; the Chatelaine walked up to one or two of them, though with some indifference: why did they offer her castles draped with ivy and dedicated to the dismal owl, when others, just as near, were garlanded with flowers and flooded with the melody of the waltz? They talked tentatively to her of the Alps of the Oetzthal, of the snow-peaks and glaciers of the Ortler; but she had lived, thought, eaten, breathed mountains all her life, and she was now beginning to feel that nothing would please her more, say, than to put on a long-trained gown and to trail it through Holland. The Baroness took her to the old residence of the counts of Tyrol in Meran, and put before her its display of frescos and painted glass and armorial bearings; but the Chatelaine saved her interest for the Kurhaus, the band, and the promenade. The Governor rambled about alone, picking up his pebbles and his flowers for himself. The old order was changing; the powder-puff had begun to do its work.

VIII.

VERONA: THE VERY REALM OF LOVE.

THE Chatelaine's share in the musical doings at the Schloss did not end with her tripping to other people's pipings, for she did a little piping of her own-if one may allude in such a way to the piano, the only instrument over which she had command. For the spoils of Salzburg yielded many a duet and trio, nor was Zeitgeist without such a knack in the direction of musical notation as was required to fasten a few of his own ideas on paper. The fount of melody was beginning to flow within him, and he had his piano trundled out to a certain arbored corner of the terrace, from which retreat the mingled tones of that someVOL. XLIV.-96.

what discredited instrument and the violoncello rose on several afternoons to the ears of the Baroness in her chamber above. Their work was principally on compositions of his own; most of them having been turned out, too, since their emergence from the Dolomites. There were few trios among them, the flauto transverso having more or less dropped out of the combination; but Aurelia West pleased herself with the belief that many of them were duets. A more discriminating critic would have detected their true nature: they were simply cello solos, as elaborate and showy as the Baron's technic permitted, with accompaniments, quite simple and completely subordinate, for the piano. But Aurelia was no critic; so when Zeitgeist's little finger trembled with a pathetic wabbling on the A string, or his middle one slid with a desolating moan the full length of the D, or a light touch from one or the other sent canary-like harmonics through the trellised vines about them (the poor Chatelaine, meanwhile, pegging away steadily with her prosaic chords), their listener almost saw the heavens opening; she even forgave Zeitgeist for having once told her, as they sat in front of the Casino at Interlaken, that the selection the band was playing was the "Ah, che la morte," that this air was from "Il Trovatore," and that "Il Trovatore" was an Italian opera by Verdi. And after he had given the Chatelaine a little piece which he had composed for her, and dedicated to her, Aurelia would have forgiven him even worse.

And she forgave him all future offenses, too, when he said that he had half an idea of accompanying them part way down to Italy. On the Governor's suggesting that they might leave the railway at Trent and piece out the journey with a carriage-drive along the shore of the Lake of Garda, the other half of the idea reached him, and when it came time to set out, his baggage was in as complete readiness as theirs. Aurelia attributed all this to the Chatelaine, choosing to ignore the fact that Zeitgeist and the Governor usually got along very pleasantly together, and the other fact that the curling waves of Garda, along with the pillared vineyards and lemon-groves of Riva, made a sufficient reason of themselves. But even the finest mind cannot hope to cover a wide field completely.

It was the middle of the second afternoon when the carriage turned away from the shores of Garda and struck out over the highway to Verona. And it was within some ten miles of Verona that their vetturino made his last halt for rest and water. This occurred at a little town that spread itself out long and thin in its attempt to inclose a very large piazza — a piazza dull and grass-grown, with a café and

of frayed lace and tarnished tinsel, but whose face showed an amused, indulgent, condescending smile that none of the others could have achieved in ten generations. His large, full neck rose from a deep chest and a broad pair of shoulders, and his arms, bare to the pits, showed forth the muscles of the accomplished athlete. He advanced with a strong, springy step, and then with a long leap suddenly launched himself upon the bars, on which he turned, spun, balanced, swung, with all the conscious mastery of one who fully knows the ropes. The horn and the clarinet, after their first gasp of surprise, fell to with redoubled vigor, the assembled urchins shrieked with a shrill delight, and a group of sun-browned women, with shawls over their heads, looked on with a fascinated stare. More twists and turns, more springings and swingings; then some vaulting; then some mighty juggling with dumb-bells. A lady who sat up under the awning had rested a magnificent bunch of great flowers on the railing before her; she tore them eagerly apart and showered them down with both hands. Some one behind her clapped his palms together, and called out, "Bis! bis!" in a high tenor voice. The athlete stuck one of the flowers into his belt, scooped up a dozen more of them and gave them with a flourish to the girl of the tambourine, satirically acknowledged the applause of the villagers and of the mountebanks themselves, ran his long fingers through his damp locks, and stalked back into

the inn.

The Governor looked at Bertha and Aurelia, Bertha looked at the Governor and Aurelia, Aurelia looked at the Governor and Bertha, and Zeitgeist looked at all three, wondering. This acrobat was the man whom they had met on the Lucerne steamer, and who had called himself the Marquis of Tempo-Rubato. They had scaled him down from a nobleman to an inferior opera-singer; now, it seemed, they must reduce him from this last grade to that of a mere strolling tumbler. In what rôle would he next appear? That of an ashman, a ragpicker? Could insolent assurance go further? The Governor ordered the vetturino to an immediate advance on Verona. Nor need he spare his horses; the greater the speed, the greater the relief.

Thus, under the impulse of indignation, the pleasant town of Verona came presently into view, with amelioration in the towering campanile of the Municipio, the long front of the lofty fortress, and the soaring cypresses of the Giusti gardens. Sunset found them domiciled in a little hotel situated on a back street, but fronting immediately on the river, an establishment to which Zeitgeist had guided them, and in whose German-speaking waiters and

porcelain stoves he took a certain national pride. They dined, in front of the house, on a fish which an engaging waiter had lately brought up from the stream expressly for their meal, and the same atmosphere of general good nature was presently lulling them all to a slumberous forgetfulness of Latin effrontery.

No town can have a stronger claim on the regard of the appreciative traveler than Verona. Few monuments are nobler than its Roman arena or its Lombardic churches; few inclosures more picturesque than its churchyard of Maria Antica, with the Gothic monuments of the Scaligers, or its Piazza delle Erbe sprinkled with the white umbrellas of the market-women; few streams more quaintly pictorial than the rapid Adige bearing up its flock of mills on bobbing scows; few gardens more grateful than those of the Villa Giusti, pierced by steep avenues that lead up to a wide view of Alps and Apennines: but all these were not the things with which the active mind of Aurelia West was most concerned. She now regarded the visit to Verona in the light of a pilgrimage (however she might have regarded it a month previously), and it was not Verona so much as the Amanti di Verona that filled her thoughts. It is in places like Verona, full of features of the second rank, but without one absolutely of the first, that a large party may fall a victim to some one of its members who happens to have a definite idea. Aurelia West had a definite idea, and it led them all, without let, hindrance, or delay, to the mansion of the Capulets.

Medieval magnificence, like medieval manners, needs to be judged by a standard more or less its own, a truth not fully realized by this enthusiastic cicerone. She had seen most of the great Juliets of the day,—there are dozens of them, scores,—and she was familiar with the fervid imaginings that provided each with her own "scenic investiture." But the actual home of the Capulets is pitched in a key much more subdued, and if Aurelia's mind had not been in the broadly poetic condition that can digest all crudities and incongruities, she might have left this lordly and storied house with a sense of disappointment-this house" whence"

as we learn from the tableted front"whence fled that Juliet for whom so many tender hearts have mourned, so many poets sung." The house is doubly authenticated. Besides this inscription there is the cappelletto, the little stone hat, which is set over the low archway leading to the inner court, and which has come to be almost as well known as the papal tiara. It was under this archway that the first member of the family came to greet them, a personage whom the Governor, willing to amuse and to be amused, identified as the bloody Tybalt; and he, in the midst of a

lamentable outcry, was driving forth a little Montague who seemed to have been pulling the hair of one of the little Capulets. It was he, in fact, who drew their attention to the cappelletto, and his crooked fingers and yearning eye seemed to hint that such a service was entitled to recognition. The rest of the family were also found at home, though not especially prepared for visitors; six centuries of the glare of publicity have probably rendered them indifferent. Nor was the stage set with the ornate care that we have come to expect for the latter part of Act I; the courtyard was noisy with a great ado of horses and donkeys, and carts and wagons and water-drawing, while spread around over many balconies sat many of the company, quite careless of their cues. Úp in that of the second story was old Capulet, smacking noisily-he always is rather noisy, if you recollect - over a plate of soup, and on the next stage above appeared the Nurse, knitting a sock, but not allowing that to interrupt the flow of gossip with other females of the house. A girl drawing water at the well Zeitgeist claimed to identify as the heroine herself, though the Governor proposed another candidate for the honor one high up in the loftiest balcony of all. She glanced back and forth between the visitors and something that she held in her hand, an implement that the Governor declared to be a curling-iron, though Zeitgeist contemptuously termed it a lemon-squeezer. But there seemed to be no tendency to rant in either young woman, and so the point remained undecided. The matter of the balcony was more perplexing still; the entire courtyard was bal conied only too thoroughly, to say nothing of the front of the house itself. The puzzled eye of the Chatelaine roamed about hither and thither, in a vain attempt to find some place to rest, and Aurelia, who was pleased to notice that Bertha was taking matters with an appropriate seriousness, plaintively inquired if the balcony might not look on some garden or other behind the house. They came away with that point also left open; but Zeitgeist had attempted no heavy-handed analysis of the Juliet-myth, the Governor's recollection of Julia Placidia had kept him in a mood tenderly considerate, and Aurelia was therefore able to regard their visit as a reasonable success.

The house of the Capulets disposed of, Aurelia's next achievement was the tomb of Juliet. The one she had approached with respect, but the other she drew nigh to with reverence; it was all the difference, in fact, between narthex and sanctuary. The road to this place of sepulture is long and devious, and leads by way of barracks, and stone-yards, and stretches of dusty openness to a remote edge of the town. Aurelia and the Chatelaine carried between

them a large pasteboard box, the contents of which seemed precious beyond their weight, and demurely followed the Governor, who himself followed the seven-year-old boy that was acting as their guide. They had thrown themselves on his good offices at one period of their pilgrimage when the way had seemed involved in grave uncertainty, and the Governor, who was fond of talking with little boys who had black eyes and bare legs, left the two young women to entertain each other and to guard the wreath. The Governor had asked the lad who "Giulietta" might be, and he had simply replied that she was dead. The precocity of this answer, and the assurance which it conveyed that they were not proceeding on false premises, quite charmed the old gentleman, and he rewarded the child for this brief obituary on a scale that might almost have seemed lavish for a complete biography.

Just at the entrance to the garden they encountered two gentlemen; the first was Fin-deSiècle and the second was Tempo-Rubato, whose present aspect rather delayed recognition. Both were perspiring freely, though the day was cool, and Aurelia conjectured, despite their leisurely manner, that they had been following from afar and had taken a hurried cut to reach the gate first. Tempo-Rubato in his present guise suggested neither an ashman nor a rag-picker. He wore a black frock-coat, a pair of pearl-gray trousers, a high hat, and a flower in his buttonhole; and our friends, who had never before seen him in the ordinary dress of every-day life, were willing enough to acknowledge that under a combination of felicitous circumstances the ideal of the tailor's fashion-plate might readily be reached. Clothed he was, indeed; and Aurelia hoped that he was in his right mind, too; certainly this was no place to balance on a tight rope stretched between decency and indecency. And as for Finde-Siècle, let him but repeat in this sacred place the tactics which had almost turned the interment of Julia Placidia into a travesty, and it would cost him the acquaintance of all three. But Aurelia did not regret the coming of this pair; she was firm in the faith, and what better place was there to combat heresy than at the altar itself? They had probably come to scoff; perhaps they might remain to pray.

The two young men lifted their hats with a careless ease, and came forward with all confidence and complacency. Neither of them had seriously taken Miss West as a person of any great importance, or had treated the Chatelaine with a much greater degree of deference than she had been able to exact. TempoRubato, indeed, appeared to think that it would be a very simple matter to resume the easy attitude of the Lucerne steamer, with all its gen