or the old mother who has stayed at
home among the olives, and a clay pipe for the old father taking his
holiday rest on the doorstep by her side. They form bright pictures
against the open archways of the palaces beyond, through which the young
green of the gardens gleams in the sunlight. There is an air of mystery
and reserve about these broad gateways which contrasts well with the
honest, gaudy street-life under the arcades. One of these palaces may be
Baptista's, and within the unwelcome wooers of his daughters may be
feasting with him or sauntering arm-in-arm through the young leafage of
the garden, flouted by saucy Kate and shunned by sweet Bianca.

Conspicuous among the brown-faced peasants were the students, who
strolled by in groups with a lordly air of possession or gathered in
knots at the street-corners and waxed loud in discussion. They were
lithe, slender, handsome fellows, with dark eyes and fair skins and oval
faces. They had that nameless poetic grace which is the birthright of
all young Italians. The soft feminine beauty of these young Paduans,
with their dainty dress and pretty girlish ways, was something akin to
the sleepy grace of young lions. Watch that group at the corner waxing
hot over some wrong done to the leaders of their party--some one of
their political heroes arrested and cast into prison for uttering the
thoughts of all just men. See their eyes flash, their hands move in
anger and grope instinctively toward the place where they wore their
swords in their year of service. Do you say that the old Paduan flame
has died out of these young hearts? They are of the same temper as the
hearts that held out against the Venetian, the Visconti, the pope
himself--that made a hedge for the Austrian bayonets to pierce, and
yielded life and fame and fortune for their country's sake, and
languished in the hundred prisons of the northern tyrants, and were
lifted up at last in one great glad shout of victory. Let those
battle-fields among the olive-farms on the hills outside the gates tell
the story of the Paduan students. Their bright youthfulness was like
sunshine warming the gray old walls of the town. The romance of the old
Italian life seemed incarnate in their graceful shapes. Such heads as
theirs gleam out from the dark canvases that hang high in the corridors
of the old palaces--sometimes as the portrait of a long-forgotten young
knight; sometimes in the guise of a warrior-saint, some George or
Mic