in some remote place to
meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets for him the
_genius loci_ as he has conceived it. Though his own subjectivity will
assuredly play a considerable part in such an encounter, transferring
to his chance acquaintance qualities he may not possess, and
connecting this personality in some purely imaginative manner with
thoughts derived from study, or impressions made by nature; yet the
stranger will henceforth become the meeting-point of many memories,
the central figure in a composition which derives from him its
vividness. Unconsciously and innocently he has lent himself to the
creation of a picture, and round him, as around the hero of a myth,
have gathered thoughts and sentiments of which he had himself no
knowledge. On one of these nights I had been threading the aisles of
acacia-trees, now glaring red, now azure, as the Bengal lights kept
changing. My mind instinctively went back to scenes of treachery and
bloodshed in the olden time, when Gorrado Trinci paraded the mangled
remnants of three hundred of his victims, heaped on mule-back, through
Foligno, for a warning to the citizens. As the procession moved along
the ramparts, I found myself in contest with a young man, who readily
fell into conversation. He was very tall, with enormous breadth of
shoulders, and long sinewy arms, like Michelangelo's favourite models.
His head was small, curled over with crisp black hair. Low forehead,
and thick level eyebrows absolutely meeting over intensely bright
fierce eyes. The nose descending straight from the brows, as in a
statue of Hadrian's age. The mouth full-lipped, petulant, and
passionate above a firm round chin. He was dressed in the shirt, white
trousers, and loose white jacket of a contadino; but he did not move
with a peasant's slouch, rather with the elasticity and alertness of
an untamed panther. He told me that he was just about to join a
cavalry regiment; and I could well imagine, when military dignity was
added to that gait, how grandly he would go. This young man, of whom I
heard nothing more after our half-hour's conversation among the
crackling fireworks and roaring cannon, left upon my mind an
indescribable impression of dangerousness--of 'something fierce and
terrible, eligible to burst forth.' Of men like this, then, were
formed the Companies of Adventure who flooded Italy with villany,
ambition, and lawlessness in the fifteenth century. Gattamelata, who
began life