rt of misery and therefore
would not be tempted by a chance to let a couple of rooms. I expressed
this idea to Mrs. Prest, who gave me a very logical reply. "If she
didn't live in a big house how could it be a question of her having
rooms to spare? If she were not amply lodged herself you would lack
ground to approach her. Besides, a big house here, and especially in
this quartier perdu, proves nothing at all: it is perfectly compatible
with a state of penury. Dilapidated old palazzi, if you will go out of
the way for them, are to be had for five shillings a year. And as for
the people who live in them--no, until you have explored Venice socially
as much as I have you can form no idea of their domestic desolation.
They live on nothing, for they have nothing to live on." The other idea
that had come into my head was connected with a high blank wall which
appeared to confine an expanse of ground on one side of the house.
Blank I call it, but it was figured over with the patches that please a
painter, repaired breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick
that had turned pink with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles of
certain rickety trellises, were visible over the top. The place was a
garden, and apparently it belonged to the house. It suddenly occurred to
me that if it did belong to the house I had my pretext.

I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was covered with the
golden glow of Venice) from the shade of our felze, and she asked me if
I would go in then, while she waited for me, or come back another time.
At first I could not decide--it was doubtless very weak of me. I wanted
still to think I MIGHT get a footing, and I was afraid to meet failure,
for it would leave me, as I remarked to my companion, without another
arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired as I sat there
hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know why even now
and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate (which might be
wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded), I had not
the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down. In that way I
might obtain the documents without bad nights.

"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the impatience of my tone when
I suggest that you must have forgotten the very fact (surely I
communicated it to you) which pushed me to throw myself upon your
ingenuity. The old woman won't have the documents spoken of; they are
personal, delicate, intimat