nzo, and the wicked Prince Innominato.

Nevertheless I took some credit to myself for remembering the old book
so well, and fancied that there weren't many other travellers nowadays
who would have it. But pride usually goes before a fall, as hard-hearted
nurses tell vain little girls who have come to grief in their prettiest
dresses; and at lunch it appeared that the humblest, most youthful
waiter at Lecco knew more about the classic romance of the country than
I did. Indeed, not a character in the book that wasn't well represented
in a picture on the wall or a painted post-card, and all seemed at
least as real to the people of Lecco as any of their modern
fellow-citizens.

The landlord was so shocked at the idea of our going on without driving
a few kilometres to Acquate, the village where Renzo and Lucia had
lived, and visiting the wayside shrine where Don Roderigo accosted
Lucia, that Aunt Kathryn was fired with a desire to go, though the
Prince (who had come the same way we had) would have dissuaded her by
saying there was nothing worth seeing. "I believe you don't approve of
stories about wicked Princes like Innominato," said Beechy, "and that's
why you don't want us to go. You're afraid we'll get suspicious if we
know too much about them." After that speech the Prince didn't object
any more, and even went with us in his car, when we had rounded off our
lunch with the Robiolo cheese of the country.

It was a short drive to Lucia's village; we could have walked in less
than an hour, but that wouldn't have pleased Aunt Kathryn.
Appropriately, we passed a statue of Manzoni on the way--a delightful
Manzoni seated comfortably on a monument (with sculptured medallions
from scenes in his books) almost within sight of the road to Acquate,
and quite within sight of Monte Resegno, where the castle of wicked
Innominato still stands. Then no sooner had we turned into the narrow
road leading up to the little mountain hamlet than our intentions became
the property of every passer-by, every peasant, every worker from the
wire factories.

"_I Promessi Sposi_," they would say to each other in a matter-of-course
way, with an accompanying nod that settled our destination without a
loophole of doubt.

In Acquate itself, a tiny but picturesque old village (draped with
wistaria from end to end, as if it were _en fete_), everything was
reminiscent and commemorative of the romance that had made its fame.
Here was Via Cristoforo; the