rcules speaks in blank verse and in a
phrase, full of _sesquipedalia verba_, demands his country and lineage.
Girolamo replies in the Piedmontese dialect and with a strong nasal accent:
"_De mi pais, de Piemong_." Girolamo, however, though he professes to be as
brave as Mars himself has a great repugnance to accompanying his master to
the shades below, or to the "_casa del diavolo_," as he calls it; and while
Hercules fights with Cerberus, he shakes and trembles all over, as he does
likewise when he meets _Madonna Morte_.

All this is very absurd and ridiculous, but it is impossible not to laugh
and be amused at it. An anecdote is related of the _flesh and blood_
Girolamo, that he had a very pretty wife, who took it into her head one day
to elope with a French officer; and that to revenge himself he dramatized
the event and produced it on his own theatre under the title of _Colombina
scampata coll'uffiziale_, having filled the piece with severe satire and
sarcastic remarks against women in general and Colombina in particular.

The atelier of the famous artist in mosaic Rafaelli is well worth
inspecting; and here I had an opportunity of beholding a copy in mosaic and
nearly finished of the celebrated picture of Leonardo da Vinci representing
the _Caena Domini_. What a useful as well as admirable art is the mosaic to
perpetuate the paintings of the greatest masters! I recollected on
beholding this work that Eustace, in his _Tour thro' Italy_,[55] relates
with a pious horror that the French soldiers used the original picture as a
target to practise at with ball cartridge, and that Christ's head was
singled out as the mark. This absurd tale, which had not the least shadow
of truth in it, has, it appears, gained some credit among weak-minded
people; and I therefore beg leave to contradict it in the most formal
manner. It was Buonaparte who, the moment the picture was discovered,
ordered it to be put in mosaic. No! the French were the protectors and
encouragers, and by no means the destroyers of the works of art; and this
ridiculous story of the picture being used as a target was probably
invented by the priesthood, who seemed to have taken great delight in
imposing on poor Eustace's credulity. To me it seems that such a story
could only have been invented by a monk, and believed and repeated by an
old woman or a bigot. The priests and French emigrants have invented and
spread the most shameful and improbable calumnies against