time to listen to a speech from the charming and
ingenious lady of the house before expiring. In this address she
reminded her guests of the occurrence in the Venetian ball-room, and
perhaps exulted a little tediously in her present vengeance. She was
surprised and pained when one of the guests interrupted her, and,
justifying the treatment she had received at Venice, declared himself
her natural son. The lady instantly recognized him, and in the sudden
revulsion of maternal feeling, begged him to take an antidote. This he
not only refused to do, but continued his dying reproaches, till his
mother, losing her self-command, drew her poniard and plunged it into
his heart.

The blood of her son fell upon the table-cloth, and this being hung
out of the window to dry, the wall received a stain, which neither
the sun nor rain of centuries sufficed to efface, and which was only
removed with the masonry, when it became necessary to restore the
wall under that window, a few months before the time of my visit to
Ferrara. Accordingly, the blood-stain has now disappeared; but the
conscientious artist who painted the new wall has faithfully restored
the tragic spot, by bestowing upon the stucco a bloody dash of
Venetian red.

III.

It would be pleasant and merciful, I think, if old towns, after having
served a certain number of centuries for the use and pride of men,
could be released to a gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would
like to have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as Mantua, Modena,
Parma, and Ferrara, locked up quietly within their walls, and left to
crumble and totter and fall, without any harder presence to vex them
in their decrepitude than that of some gray custodian, who should come
to the gate with clanking keys, and admit the wandering stranger, if
he gave signs of a reverent sympathy, to look for a little while upon
the reserved and dignified desolation. It is a shame to tempt these
sad old cities into unnatural activity, when they long ago made their
peace with the world, and would fain be mixing their weary brick
and mortar with the earth's unbuilded dust; and it is hard for the
emotional traveller to restrain his sense of outrage at finding them
inhabited, and their rest broken by sounds of toil, traffic, and
idleness; at seeing places that would gladly have had done with
history still doomed to be parts of political systems, to read the
newspapers, and to expose railway guides and caricature