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pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) by
exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, 'Ha! ha! Eleven minutes
to six! The General dead! and the spy hanged!' This brought the
curtain down, triumphantly.


There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier
residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds,
whither we removed as soon as our three months' tenancy of the Pink
Jail at Albaro had ceased and determined.

It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof from the
town: surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned with
statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, walks of
orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and camellias. All
its apartments are beautiful in their proportions and decorations;
but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three large
windows at the end, overlooking the whole town of Genoa, the
harbour, and the neighbouring sea, affords one of the most
fascinating and delightful prospects in the world. Any house more
cheerful and habitable than the great rooms are, within, it would
be difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more delicious than
the scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined.
It is more like an enchanted place in an Eastern story than a grave
and sober lodging.

How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of the
wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their fresh
colouring as if they had been painted yesterday; or how one floor,
or even the great hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a
spacious promenade; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers
above, which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely know the
way through; or how there is a view of a perfectly different
character on each of the four sides of the building; matters
little. But that prospect from the hall is like a vision to me. I
go back to it, in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred
times a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents
from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of
happiness.

There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many
churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny
sky; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary
convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron across at
the end, where sometimes early in the morning, I have seen a little
group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and
stopping now and then to peep down upon the waking world in which
they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good
weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here, upon the
left. The Fort within the walls (the good King built it to command
the town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in
case they should be discontented) commands that height upon the
right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there; and that line of

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