es the poodle of
the house. Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if
they have seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they
are conducted with some ceremony to a large room on the ground-floor
of the inn, looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was
here that I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became
possessor of an object that has made the memory of Crema doubly
interesting to me ever since.

When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man, gentle, grave,
and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the
_cinquecento_. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value,
in dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians,
Lionardos, Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a
purchaser. In truth this museum was a _bric-a-brac_ shop of a
sort that is common enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace,
glass, armour, furniture, and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor
Folcioni began by pointing out the merits of his pictures; and after
making due allowance for his zeal as amateur and dealer, it was
possible to join in some of his eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for
instance, bought in Verona from a noble house in ruins, showed
Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy greens and lucid crimsons
shining from a background deep and glowing. Then he led us to a
walnut-wood bureau of late Renaissance work, profusely carved with
nymphs and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons of fruits embossed
in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal of antiquity upon
the blooming faces and luxuriant garlandslike the touch of Time who
'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the shelves of an ebony
cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out of rock-crystal
and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of engraved gems, old
snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral, and all the indescribable
lumber that one age flings aside as worthless for the next to pick
up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely the genius of
culture in our century might be compared to a chiffonnier of Paris,
who, when the night has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on back
and lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day of whirling
life has left him.

The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the
fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens
to look at it. Yet there stood the Santo gest