y during the thirteenth century. She was the
only daughter of the rich and potent lord, Manfredo, Count of Baone
and Abano, who died leaving his heiress to the guardianship of
Spinabello da Xendrico. When his ward reached womanhood, Spinabello
cast about him to find a suitable husband for her, and it appeared to
him that a match with the son of Tiso du Camposampiero promised
the greatest advantages. Tiso, to whom he proposed the affair, was
delighted, but desiring first to take counsel with his friends upon
so important a matter, he confided it for advice to his brother-in-law
and closest intimate, Ecelino Balbo. It had just happened that Balbo's
son, Ecelino il Monaco, was at that moment disengaged, having
been recently divorced from his first wife, the lovely but light
Speronella; and Balbo falsely went to the greedy guardian of Cecilia,
and offering him better terms than he could hope for from Tiso,
secured Cecilia for his son. At this treachery the Camposampieri were
furious; but they dissembled their anger till the moment of revenge
arrived, when Cecilia's rejected suitor encountering her upon a
journey beyond the protection of her husband, violently dishonored his
successful rival. The unhappy lady returning to Ecelino at Bassano,
recounted her wrong, and was with a horrible injustice repudiated and
sent home, while her husband arranged schemes of vengeance in due time
consummated. Cecilia next married a Venetian noble, and being in
due time divorced, married yet again, and died the mother of a large
family of children.

This is a very old scandal, yet I think there was an _habitue_ of the
caffe in Bassano who could have given some of its particulars from
personal recollection. He was an old and smoothly shaven gentleman, in
a scrupulously white waistcoat, whom we saw every evening in a corner
of the caffe playing solitaire. He talked with no one, saluted no
one. He drank his glasses of water with anisette, and silently played
solitaire. There is no good reason to doubt that he had been doing the
same thing every evening for six hundred years.

V.

POSSAGNO, CANOVA'S BIRTHPLACE.

It did not take a long time to exhaust the interest of Bassano, but we
were sorry to leave the place because of the excellence of the inn at
which we tarried. It was called "Il Mondo," and it had everything
in it that heart could wish. Our rooms were miracles of neatness and
comfort; they had the freshness, not the rawness, of