e Fane of Fortune. On the fountain
in the market-place stands a bronze Fortuna, slim and airy, offering
her veil to catch the wind. May she long shower health and prosperity
upon the modern watering-place of which she is the patron saint!

* * * * *

_THE PALACE OF URBINO_

I

At Rimini, one spring, the impulse came upon my wife and me to make
our way across San Marino to Urbino. In the Piazza, called
apocryphally after Julius Caesar, I found a proper _vetturino_, with a
good carriage and two indefatigable horses. He was a splendid fellow,
and bore a great historic name, as I discovered when our bargain was
completed. 'What are you called?' I asked him. '_Filippo Visconti, per
servirla!_' was the prompt reply. Brimming over with the darkest
memories of the Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this
answer. The associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man himself
was so attractive--tall, stalwart, and well looking--no feature of his
face or limb of his athletic form recalling the gross tyrant who
concealed worse than Caligula's ugliness from sight in secret
chambers--that I shook this preconception from my mind. As it turned
out, Filippo Visconti had nothing in common with his infamous namesake
but the name. On a long and trying journey, he showed neither sullen
nor yet ferocious tempers; nor, at the end of it, did he attempt by
any master-stroke of craft to wheedle from me more than his fair pay;
but took the meerschaum pipe I gave him for a keepsake, with the frank
goodwill of an accomplished gentleman. The only exhibition of his hot
Italian blood which I remember did his humanity credit.

While we were ascending a steep hillside, he jumped from his box to
thrash a ruffian by the roadside for brutal treatment to a little boy.
He broke his whip, it is true, in this encounter; risked a dangerous
quarrel; and left his carriage, with myself and wife inside it, to the
mercy of his horses in a somewhat perilous position. But when he came
back, hot and glowing, from this deed of justice, I could only applaud
his zeal.

An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with the
refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence which is innate
in a race of immemorial culture, is a fascinating being. He may be
absolutely ignorant in all book-learning. He may be as ignorant as a
Bersagliere from Montalcino with whom I once conversed at Rimini, who
gravely said