s speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to
me to come up.

'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his
hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a
sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane
lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very
tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as
Vicomile, where he had made a halt.

'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures--a pine wood, a
tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between
the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply
the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style
that goes back to the eleventh century--a tree-trunk of stone, as it
were, covered with sculptured sirens and peacocks, serpents and griffins
and dragons--a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt
monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased--Gothico-Byzantine in
style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an
almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto
Cellini----

'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember
every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for
word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I
could reproduce every modulation of his voice.

'He showed us two or three little sketches he had made, and then began
again describing the wonders of Vicomile with that warmth with which he
always speaks of beautiful things and that enthusiasm for art which is
one of his most potent attractions.

'"I promised the Canonico to come back to-morrow. We will all go, will
we not, Francesca? Donna Maria ought to see Vicomile!"

'Oh, my name on his lips! If it were possible, I could reproduce the
very movements of his lips in uttering each syllable of those two
words--Donna Maria----But what I never could express is my own emotion
on hearing it; could never explain the unknown, undreamed-of sensation
awakened in me by the presence of this man.

'We sat there till dinner-time. Contrary to her usual habit, Francesca
seemed a little pensive and out of spirits. There were moments when
heavy silence fell upon us. But between him and me there then occurred
one of those _silent colloquies_ in which the soul exhales the Ineffable
and hears the murmur