d when a stout blade on the thigh was a most excellent
travelling companion. Hamlet, though of a philosophical complexion, was
not slower than another man to scent an affront; he excelled at feats
of arms, and no doubt his skill, caught of the old fencing-master at
Elsinore, stood him in good stead more than once when his wit would not
have saved him. Certainly, he had hair-breadth escapes while toiling
through the wilds of Prussia and Bavaria and Switzerland. At all events,
he counted himself fortunate the night he arrived at Verona with nothing
more serious than a two-inch scratch on his sword arm.

There he lodged himself, as became a gentleman of fortune, in a suite of
chambers in a comfortable palace overlooking the swift-flowing Adige--a
riotous yellow stream that cut the town into two parts, and was
spanned here and there by rough-hewn stone bridges, which it sometimes
sportively washed away. It was a brave old town that had stood sieges
and plagues, and was full of mouldy, picturesque buildings and a gayety
that has since grown somewhat mouldy. A goodly place to rest in for the
wayworn pilgrim! He dimly recollected that he had letters to one or two
illustrious families; but he cared not to deliver them at once. It was
pleasant to stroll about the city, unknown. There were sights to
see: the Roman amphitheatre, and the churches with their sculptured
sarcophagi and saintly relics--interesting joints and saddles of
martyrs, and enough fragments of the true cross to build a ship. The
life in the _piazze_ and on the streets, the crowds in the shops, the
pageants, the lights, the stir, the color, all mightily took the eye
of the young Dane. He was in a mood to be amused. Everything diverted
him--the faint pulsing of a guitar-string in an adjacent garden at
midnight, or the sharp clash of gleaming sword blades under his window,
when the Montecchi and the Cappelletti chanced to encounter each other
in the narrow footway.

Meanwhile, Hamlet brushed up his Italian. He was well versed in the
literature of the language, particularly in its dramatic literature, and
had long meditated penning a gloss to "The Murther of Gonzago," a play
which Hamlet held in deservedly high estimation.

He made acquaintances, too. In the same palace where he sojourned
lived a very valiant soldier and wit, a kinsman to Prince Escalus, one
Mercutio by name, with whom Hamlet exchanged civilities on the staircase
at first, and then fell into comp