s
of this kind there are always two keys--one left in charge of the
keeper of the cemetery, the other possessed by the person or persons to
whom the mausoleum belongs, and this other I managed to obtain.

On one occasion, being left for some time alone in my own library at
the villa, I remembered that in an upper drawer of an old oaken
escritoire that stood there, had always been a few keys belonging to
the doors of cellars and rooms in the house. I looked, and found them
lying there as usual; they all had labels attached to them, signifying
their use, and I turned them over impatiently, not finding what I
sought. I was about to give up the search, when I perceived a large
rusty iron key that had slipped to the back of the drawer; I pulled it
out, and to my satisfaction it was labeled "Mausoleum." I immediately
took possession of it, glad to have obtained so useful and necessary an
implement; I knew that I should soon need it. The cemetery was quite
deserted at this festive season--no one visited it to lay wreaths of
flowers or sacred mementoes on the last resting-places of their
friends. In the joys of the carnival who thinks of the dead? In my
frequent walks there I was always alone; I might have opened my own
vault and gone down into it without being observed, but I did not; I
contented myself with occasionally trying the key in the lock, and
assuring myself that it worked without difficulty.

Returning from one of these excursions late on a mild afternoon toward
the end of the week preceding my marriage, I bent my steps toward the
Molo, where I saw a picturesque group of sailors and girls dancing one
of those fantastic, graceful dances of the country, in which
impassioned movement and expressive gesticulation are everything. Their
steps were guided and accompanied by the sonorous twanging of a
full-toned guitar and the tinkling beat of a tambourine. Their
handsome, animated faces, their flashing eyes and laughing lips, their
gay, many-colored costumes, the glitter of beads on the brown necks of
the maidens, the red caps jauntily perched on the thick black curls of
the fishermen--all made up a picture full of light and life thrown up
into strong relief against the pale gray and amber tints of the
February sky and sea; while shadowing overhead frowned the stern dark
walls of the Castel Nuovo.

It was such a scene as the English painter Luke Fildes might love to
depict on his canvas--the one man of to-day who, thoug