for the flirtation
of lovers by day and the vengeance of rivals by night. They have seen
the now vacant streets thronged with maskers, and the Venetian Podesta
going in gorgeous state to and from the vast Palazzo della Ragione. They
have witnessed ringing tournaments in those sad, empty squares, and
races in the Prato della Valle, and many other wonders of different
epochs, and their pleasure makes me half sorry that I should have lived
for several years within an hour by rail from Padua, and should know
little or nothing of these great sights from actual observation. I take
shame to myself for having visited Padua so often and so familiarly as I
used to do,--for having been bored and hungry there,--for having had
toothache there, upon one occasion,--for having rejoiced more in a cup
of coffee at Pedrocchi's than in the whole history of Padua,--for having
slept repeatedly in the bad-bedded hotels of Padua and never once dreamt
of Portia,--for having been more taken by the _salti mortali_[A] of a
waiter who summed up my account at a Paduan restaurant, than by all the
strategies with which the city has been many times captured and
recaptured. Had I viewed Padua only over the wall of Doctor Rappaccini's
garden, how different my impressions of the city would now be! This is
one of the drawbacks of actual knowledge.

"Ah! how can you write about Spain when once you have been there?" asked
Heine of Theophile Gautier setting out on a journey thither.

Nevertheless it seems to me that I remember something about Padua with a
sort of romantic pleasure. There was a certain charm which I can dimly
recall, in sauntering along the top of the old wall of the city, and
looking down upon the plumy crests of the Indian-corn that nourished up
so mightily from the dry bed of the moat. At such times I could not help
figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the
fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe upon
the plains below, the bristling arms of the besieged upon the wall, the
boom of the great mortars made of ropes and leather and throwing mighty
balls of stone, the stormy flight of arrows, the ladders planted against
the defences and staggering headlong into the moat, enriched for future
agriculture not only by its sluggish waters, but by the blood of many
men. I suppose that most of these visions were old stage spectacles
furbished up anew, and that my armies were chiefly equipped with t