white, on a red ground; flowers and garlands are wreathed on the
fronts of the stern old walls. If peasants, and shopkeepers, and
monks, priests, beggars, and _hoi polloi_ generally, possess the
pavement, overhead every balcony, gallery, terrace, and casement,
is filled with company, representatives of the historic families of
Lucca, the Manfredi, Possenti, Navascoes, Bernardini, dal Portico,
Bocella, Manzi, da Gia, Orsetti, Ruspoli--feudal names dear to native
ears. The noble marquis, or his excellency the count, lord of broad
acres on the plains, or principalities in the mountains, or of hoarded
wealth at the National Bank--is he not Lucchese also to the backbone?
And does he not delight in the festival as keenly as that half-naked
beggar, who rattles his box for alms, with a broad grin on his dirty
face?

Resplendent are the ladies in the balconies, dressed in their
best--like bands of fluttering ribbon stretched across the
sombre-fronted palaces; aristocratic daughters, and dainty consorts.
They are not chary of their charms. They laugh, fan themselves, lean
over sculptured balustrades, and eye the crowded streets, talking with
lip and fan, eye and gesture.

In the long, narrow street of San Simone, behind the cathedral of San
Martino, stand the two Guinigi Palaces. They are face to face. One is
ditto of the other. Each is in the florid style of Venetian-Gothic,
dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century. Both were built
by Paolo Guinigi, head of the illustrious house of that name, for
forty years general and tyrant of the Republic of Lucca. Both palaces
bear his arms, graven on marble tablets beside the entrance. Both
are of brick, now dulled and mellowed into a reddish white. Both
have walls of enormous thickness. The windows of the upper
stories--quadruple casements divided, Venetian-like, by twisted
pillarettes richly carved--are faced and mullioned with marble.

The lower windows (mere square apertures) are barred with iron. The
arched portals opening to the streets are low, dark, and narrow. The
inner courts gloomy, damp, and prison-like. Brass ornaments, sockets,
rings, and torch-holders of iron, sculptured emblems, crests, and
cognizances in colored marble, are let into the outer walls. In all
else, ornamentation is made subservient to defense. These are city
fortresses rather than ancestral palaces. They were constructed to
resist either attack or siege.

Rising out of the overhanging roof (s