it was gratifying to the interest felt by them.

First the visitors were led by the bachelor brothers to see the huge old
mansion, which they called the _Palazzo_. Let no one who has seen an
ordinary Genoese palace, magnificent with gilding, enriched by priceless
pictures, supplied with choice books, and adorned with gorgeous
furniture, figure to himself any such combination in the _palazzo_ in
question. This was a vast pile of building, that would make five
moderate-sized dwelling-houses, one in the roof, and the other four in
the habitable portion of the edifice. A general air of ramshackledness
pervaded the exterior, while the interior presented an effect of
interminable ranges of white-washed walls, divided off into numberless
apartments of various sizes, from a saloon on the _piano nobile_, or
principal floor, measuring more than forty feet long, to small square
attic rooms that were little more than cupboards. But this attic story
was not all composed of chambers thus dimensioned. Among its apartments
were rooms that might have accommodated a banqueting assemblage, had
diners been so inclined; while among the accommodations comprised in
this garret range was a kitchen, with spacious dressers, stoves,
closets, and a well of water some hundred and odd feet deep. It was
impossible for the imagination to refrain from picturing the troops of
ghosts which doubtless occupied these upper chambers of the old
_palazzo_, and held nightly vigil, undisturbed, amid the silence and
solitude of their neglected spaces. Through one of the dwarf windows
that pierced at intervals all sides of the mansion, just beneath the
lofty roof, and which gave light to the attic story, we were directed to
look by the emphatic words of the elder bachelor brother,--"Ma, veda che
vista c' e!"

The view thence was indeed well worthy his praise; and he himself formed
an appropriate companion-picture to the scene. Bluish-gray eyes, a
fairer complexion than usually belongs to men of his clime and country,
a look of penetration, combined with an expression of quiet content,
were surmounted by a steeple-crowned hat that might have become a Dutch
burgomaster, or one of Teniers's land-proprietors, rather than a denizen
of a southern city. Yet the association which his face, figure, and
costume had with some of George Cruikshank's illustrations of German
tales afforded pictorial harmony with the range of ghostly rooms we were
viewing. He "marshalled us th