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
night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the
wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot,
of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to
reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots
are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat
when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and
suffocation at all other times! I wonder, above all, why it is the
great feature of domestic architecture in Italian inns, that all
the fire goes up the chimney, except the smoke!
The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, portholes, smoke,
and faggots, are welcome to me. Give me the smiling face of the
attendant, man or woman; the courteous manner; the amiable desire
to please and to be pleased; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple
air--so many jewels set in dirt--and I am theirs again to-morrow!
ARIOSTO'S house, TASSO'S prison, a rare old Gothic cathedral, and
more churches of course, are the sights of Ferrara. But the long
silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu
of banners, and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the long-
untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all.
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