snow. Castel Franco is one of the last cities of the plain;
Browning's Asolo is on the slope above it, only four or five miles away.

The station being reached at last--for even in Italy journeys end--I
rejected the offers of two cabmen, one cabwoman, and one bus driver, and
walked. There was no doubt as to the direction, with the campanile of
the duomo as a beacon. For a quarter of a mile the road is straight and
narrow; then it broadens into an open space and Castel Franco appears.
It is a castle indeed. All the old town is within vast crumbling red
walls built on a mound with a moat around them. Civic zeal has trimmed
the mound into public "grounds," and the moat is lively with ornamental
ducks; while a hundred yards farther rises the white statue of Castel
Franco's greatest son, no other than Giorgione himself, a dashing
cavalier-like gentleman with a brush instead of a rapier. If he were
like this, one can believe the story of his early death--little more
than thirty--which came about through excessive love of a lady, she
having taken the plague and he continuing to visit her.

Having examined the statue I penetrated the ramparts to the little town,
in the midst of which is the church. It was however locked, as a band of
children hastened to tell me: intimating also that if anyone on earth
knew how to effect an entrance they were the little devils in question.
So I was led to a side door, the residence of a fireman, and we pulled a
bell, and in an instant out came the fireman to extinguish whatever was
burning; but on learning my business he instantly became transformed
into the gentlest of sacristans, returned for his key, and led me,
followed by the whole pack of children, by this time greatly augmented,
to a door up some steps on the farther side of the church. The pack was
for coming in too, but a few brief yet sufficient threats from the
sacristan acted so thoroughly that not only did they melt away then but
were not there when I came out--this being in Italy unique as a merciful
disappearance. More than merciful, miraculous, leading one to believe
that Giorgione's picture really has supernatural powers.

The picture is on a wall behind the high altar, curtained. The
fireman-sacristan pulled away the curtain, handed me a pair of opera
glasses and sat down to watch me, a task in which he was joined by
another man and a boy who had been cleaning the church. There they sat,
the three of them, all huddled togeth