es. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as
a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the walls, and
you sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos. The gardener
leaves you alone to the solitude and the silence, in which the talk
of the painter and the exile is plain enough. Their contemporaries and
yours are cordial in their gay companionship: through the half-open
door falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sunshine that they saw
lie there; the deathless birds that they heard sing out in the garden
trees; it is the fresh sweetness of the grass mown so many hundred
years ago that breathes through all the lovely garden grounds.

But in the midst of this pleasant communion with the past, you have
a lurking pain; for you have hired your brougham by the hour; and you
presently quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account.

We had chosen our driver from among many other drivers of broughams in
the vicinity of Pedrocchi's, because he had such an honest look, and
was not likely, we thought, to deal unfairly with us.

"But first," said the signor who had selected him, "how much is your
brougham an hour?"

So and so.

"Show me the tariff of fares."

"There is no tariff."

"There is. Show it to me."

"It is lost, signor."

"I think not. It is here in this pocket. Get it out."

The tariff appears, and with it the fact that he had demanded just
what the boatman of the ballad received in gift,--thrice his fee.

The driver mounted his seat, and served us so faithfully that day in
Padua that we took him the next day for Arqua. At the end, when he
had received his due, and a handsome _mancia_ besides, he was still
unsatisfied, and referred to the tariff in proof that he had been
under-paid. On that confronted and defeated, he thanked us very
cordially, gave us the number of his brougham, and begged us to ask
for him when we came next to Padua and needed a carriage.

From the Chapel of the Annunziata he drove us to the Church of Santa
Giustina, where is a very famous and noble picture by Romanino. But as
this writing has nothing in the world to do with art, I here dismiss
that subject, and with a gross and idle delight follow the sacristan
down under the church to the prison of Santa Giustina.

Of all the faculties of the mind there is none so little fatiguing to
exercise as mere wonder; and, for my own sake, I try always to wonder
at things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in th