ts, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn.
Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the
yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and
bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting
in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment
he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those
times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off many years
ago; but there used to be one attached to the house--or at all events
there may have been--and the Hat (Cappello), the ancient cognizance of
the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the
yard. The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were
somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it would
have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been
able to walk through the disused rooms. But the Hat was unspeakably
comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so.
Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would
desire to see, tho of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied
with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and was
correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely
unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was
lounging on the threshold looking at the geese.

From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to the
visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet that ever
has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I went off, with
a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I
suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman
who was washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and
young flowers were prettily growing among fragments of old wall, and
ivy-covered mounds; and was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which
the bright-eyed woman--drying her arms upon her 'kerchief--called "La
tomba di Giulietta la sfortunata." With the best disposition in the
world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed
woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in
ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that
Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have
been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement ov