an do
such things, it seems to me that you would have made a great mistake in
doing anything else--as great a mistake as Julius Caesar would have made
if he had chosen to remain a fashionable lawyer instead of mixing in
politics, or Achilles, if he had taken a necklace or a bracelet and left
the sword in Ulysses' basket. You would have found your mythical duenna
a nuisance in real life."

Veronica laughed.

"At the end of the first week I should have locked her up in the dungeon
tower, to get rid of her," she said.

"I have no doubt that you would, and your people would have thought it
the most natural thing in the world. You could do anything you pleased
in this place, I fancy. They would not think it strange if you tried and
condemned a cheating steward and had him executed in that gloomy
courtyard we passed through when we came in yesterday."

"The law might find fault with my vivacity," said Veronica. "But my
people would say that I had done right if the man had really cheated
them. It is quite true, I think. I could do almost anything here. I had
a man locked up in the municipal prison the other day for forty-eight
hours, because he was tipsy and swore at Don Teodoro in the street. Of
course, it is nominally the syndic who does that sort of thing; but he
belongs to me, like everything else here, and I do as I please, just as
my grandfather did, when he really had power of life and death in Muro,
including the privilege of torture. The first article mentioned in the
old inventory was forty palms of stout rope for giving the cord, as they
called it. They did it under the main gate,--that is why it came
first,--and they used to pull them up to the vault and then drop them
with a jerk to within two feet of the ground. The ring is still there,
just inside the gate."

"My mother's uncle--the old Marchese di Rionero--once hanged a ruffian
for mutilating one of his horses out of spite. And they say that Italy
has not progressed! There is no hanging, not even for murder, nowadays."

"Yes," answered Veronica, thoughtfully, "we have progressed, in a way.
That is our trouble--we have progressed too fast and improved too
little, I think."

"That sounds paradoxical."

"Oh no! It is common sense, as I mean it. Progress costs money,
improvement brings it. Progress means wearing clothes like other people,
having splendid cities like other nations, keeping up armies and navies
like other great powers. Improvement means hel