me original plan of your own, or were to go
mare's-nest hunting amidst the ruins with certain German _Barbatuli_,--the
Bunsenists of a season--ten days will be more than sufficient,) we charge
you not to fail calling at No. 23, Via della Vite, where, if you should
possess any lurking propensities for natural history, they are sure to be
elicited. As to your first reception, if this should be of a somewhat
abnormal kind, why, so was ours;--for Cadet and her mother are certainly
originals: but that you should not be disconcerted, and in order to
prepare you for the personal appearance, as well as the unusual qualities
of our friends, we transcribe the memorandum of our own introduction to
them. Prince Musignano, whose birds they mounted, professor Metaxa, who
sent rare insects for them to determine, and W----who affirmed, (_par
parenthese_,) that no one could stuff birds like them but himself, had all
proeconised their accomplishments to us; so one morning with a note-book
full of queries, and a bottle full of insects, we descended the
_Scalinata_, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a cord pulled from
above, while a female voice demanded, _more solito_, "_chi c'e?_" On
answering, that our visit was to the _Signore_ who prepared insects, the
_voice_ said, "Come up, go in at the door to the right, and we will join
you as soon as we have made ourselves tidy." Obeying this
Little-red-riding-hood invitation, we entered the reception room, and
began to amuse ourselves with a survey of a score or two of queer-looking
pictures, (for the most part without frames,) with which the walls were
adorned; strange landscapes were there, and allegorical subjects, treated
with an equal perversity. On one that first caught our eye, a waning
moon, resting on the grass with its horns upwards, formed a couch for
Diana and Endymion; from this we had turned to a naked nymph with a pretty
face, and a torso half hidden under a cataract of dishevelled tresses,
"not penitent enough for a Magdalen," thought we, when mother and daughter
entering together, "_Ecco la mia madre_," said the girl pointing to the
picture in question. "_Come?_" asked we, "that your mother?" "Certainly,
it was painted by my own father, six months after their marriage; she was
then as you see, _una bella giovanne assai_." "Was your father, then, a
painter by profession?" "Not originally," interposed the old dame: "he was
designed for a missionary by his patron, who brought