to save the
boy, Alessandro was suddenly angry, for he had loved Curzio dearly. So
he quickly drew his dagger and stabbed the man in the breast, and threw
his body, yet breathing, over the bridge into the river. But that night
he left Rome secretly and quickly, and he lived out his days an outlaw,
while Girolamo, who was innocent of all, became the head of the Mattei
in Rome.

It is no wonder that the knife is a tradition in Trastevere. Even now it
is the means of settling difficulties, but less often by treachery than
in the other regions. For when two young men have a difference it is
usual for them to go together into some quiet inner court or walled
garden, and there they wind their handkerchiefs round their right wrists
and round the hilt of the knife to get a good hold, and they muffle
their left arms in their jackets for a shield, and face each other till
one is dead. If it be barbarous, it is at least braver than stabbing in
the dark.

Raphael is remembered in Trastevere for the beautiful little palace of
the Farnesina, which he decorated for the great and generous banker,
Agostino Chigi, and for the Fornarina, whose small house with its Gothic
window stands near the Septimian gate, where the old Aurelian wall
crosses Trastevere and the Lungara to the Tiber. And he has made
Trastevere memorable for the endless types of beauty he found there,
besides the one well-loved woman, and whom he took as models for his
work. He lived at the last, not in the house on the Roman side, which
belonged to him and is still called his, but in another, built by
Bramante, close to the old Accoramboni Palace, in the Piazza Rusticucci,
before Saint Peter's, and that one has long been torn down.

[Illustration: HOUSE BUILT FOR RAPHAEL BY BRAMANTE, NOW TORN DOWN]

We know little enough of that Margaret, called the Fornarina from her
father's profession; but we know that Raphael loved her blindly,
passionately, beyond all other thoughts; as Agostino Chigi loved the
magnificent Imperia for whom the Farnesina was built and made beautiful.
And there was a time when the great painter was almost idle, out of love
for the girl, and went about languidly with pale face and shadowed eyes,
and scarcely cared to paint or draw. He was at work in the Vatican then,
or should have been, and in the Farnesina, too; but each day, when he
went out, his feet led him away from the Pope's palace and across the
square, by the Gate of the Holy Spirit and d