ome twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all
this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding
palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy
shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding
emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms.

Death takes a stronger hold on us than bygone life. Therefore, returning
to the vast Throne-room, we animate it with one scene it witnessed on an
April night in 1508. Duke Guidobaldo had died at Fossombrone, repeating
to his friends around his bed these lines of Virgil:

Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo
Cocyti tardaque palus inamabilis unda
Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet.

His body had been carried on the shoulders of servants through those
mountain ways at night, amid the lamentations of gathering multitudes
and the baying of dogs from hill-set farms alarmed by flaring flambeaux.
Now it is laid in state in the great hall. The dais and the throne are
draped in black. The arms and _batons_ of his father hang about the
doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and trophies, with the
banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian eagle, and the cross keys of S.
Peter. The hall itself is vacant, save for the high-reared catafalque of
sable velvet and gold damask, surrounded with wax-candles burning
steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream of people, coming and
going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in crimson hose and doublet
of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on his feet, and his ducal
cap is of black velvet. The mantle of the Garter, made of dark-blue
Alexandrine velvet, hooded with crimson, lined with white silk damask,
and embroidered with the badge, drapes the stiff sleeping form.

It is easier to conjure up the past of this great palace, strolling
round it in free air and twilight; perhaps because the landscape and the
life still moving on the city streets bring its exterior into harmony
with real existence. The southern facade, with its vaulted balconies and
flanking towers, takes the fancy, fascinates the eye, and lends itself
as a fit stage for puppets of the musing mind. Once more imagination
plants trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware upon the pavement
where the garden of the Duchess lay--the pavement paced in these bad
days by convicts in grey canvas jackets--that pavement where Monsignor
Bembo courted "dear dead women" with Platonic phrase, smothering the
Men