selves liable to the censure of being eccentric, had an opportunity
of seeing its beneficial working--for those who got it up!

The Tombola finished, there was a good display of fire-works; in the
still night air of the Sabbath the fiery snakes and red serpents, blue
fires and green, darting flames and forked lights, reminded our
artists of a large painting over the Maggiore Gate of the town, where
a lot of the condemned are expiring in a very vermilion-colored
Inferno--condemned, perhaps, for Sabbath-breaking!

Returning to their inn to supper, the landlord handed them a note
without address, which he said had been sent them by the Gonfaloniere of
the city, who had called upon them as soon as he learned that they were
strangers there. Caper opening the envelope, found in it the following
printed invitation to attend a concert to be given that night at the
Palazzo Comunale, in honor of the day:

'IL GONFALONIERE

'DELLA CITTA' DI SEGNI

'Invita li sigi, Rocjean, Caper e Dexter ad intervenire all'
Accademia di Musica che si terra nella Sala del Palazzo Comunale il
giorno 18 Luglio alle ore 9-1/2 pom. per festeggiare la ricorrenza
del Protettore S. Bruno.'

'It sounds well,' said Dexter; 'but both of you have seen the
tumble-down, ruined look of the old town, or city, as they call it; and
the inhabitants, as far as I have seen them, don't indicate a very
select audience for the concert.'

'Select audience be hanged! it's this very selectness that is no
selectness, that makes your English and a part of our American society a
dreary bore,' broke in Caper; 'I've come up here in the mountains to be
free, and if the Gonfaloniere bids me welcome to a palace where the
_nobilita_ await me, with music, I shall not ask whether they are select
or not, but go.'

'I think,' spoke Rocjean, 'we should go; it will be the easiest way to
acknowledge the attention shown us, and probably the pleasantest to the
one who sent it. I am going.'

It therefore came to pass that near the hour noted in the invitation,
Rocjean and Caper, inquiring the direction to the Palazzo Comunale of
the landlord, went forth to discover its whereabouts, leaving Dexter to
hunt scorpions in the sitting-room of the inn, or study the stars from
its balcony.

Climbing up the main street, now quite dark save where the lamp of a
stray shrine or two feebly lit up a few feet around it, they soon found
the palace, the lower story of which