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horse's feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, he ran
briskly up-stairs again, I dare say to tell some other Englishman
in some other solitary room that the guest who had just departed
was Lord Beeron's living image.

I had entered Bologna by night--almost midnight--and all along the
road thither, after our entrance into the Papal territory: which
is not, in any part, supremely well governed, Saint Peter's keys
being rather rusty now; the driver had so worried about the danger
of robbers in travelling after dark, and had so infected the brave
Courier, and the two had been so constantly stopping and getting up
and down to look after a portmanteau which was tied on behind, that
I should have felt almost obliged to any one who would have had the
goodness to take it away. Hence it was stipulated, that, whenever
we left Bologna, we should start so as not to arrive at Ferrara
later than eight at night; and a delightful afternoon and evening
journey it was, albeit through a flat district which gradually
became more marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers in the
recent heavy rains.

At sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the horses rested, I
arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those singular mental
operations of which we are all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar
to me, and which I see distinctly now. There was not much in it.
In the blood red light, there was a mournful sheet of water, just
stirred by the evening wind; upon its margin a few trees. In the
foreground was a group of silent peasant girls leaning over the
parapet of a little bridge, and looking, now up at the sky, now
down into the water; in the distance, a deep bell; the shade of
approaching night on everything. If I had been murdered there, in
some former life, I could not have seemed to remember the place
more thoroughly, or with a more emphatic chilling of the blood; and
the mere remembrance of it acquired in that minute, is so
strengthened by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I
could forget it.

More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara, than
any city of the solemn brotherhood! The grass so grows up in the
silent streets, that any one might make hay there, literally, while
the sun shines. But the sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in
grim Ferrara; and the people are so few who pass and re-pass
through the places, that the flesh of its inhabitants might be
grass indeed, and growing in the squares.

I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, always lives
next door to the Hotel, or opposite: making the visitor feel as if
the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating with a deadly
energy! I wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on all
sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and
will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not
enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all

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