past Veronica's eyes like the swift changes
in a dream.

There was a long street paved with flat
stones, fitted into each other angle for angle
and point for point, like the pieces in a
child's puzzle. There was in this street no
side pavement for foot passengers, and—the
street being very full—the coachman kept
uttering a warning cry at intervals, like a
minute-gun. Indeed, as they approached
the busier parts of the town, their pace was
slackened perforce. No vehicle short of
the car of Juggernaut could have ruthlessly
kept up a steady progress through
such a crowd.

There were houses of various styles and
dimensions on either side of the long street,
nearly all plastered; one or two, however,
with a heavy cut stone front to the
basement story. Every window had the
inevitable green jalousies, and nearly every
window had a group of heads framed in it,
for it was a summer evening, and there
were people taking the air—they called it
pigliare il fresco, albeit it was yet hot
enough, and stifling in the narrow ways of
the city; and there were bright bonnets to
be criticised, and acquaintances to be
recognised, and familiar conversations touching
the privatest family affairs to be held in
brassy voices, between ladies and gentlemen
standing in the street, and other ladies and
gentlemen leaning on their elbows out of
third-floor windows. And the talkers in
the street planted themselves in any spot
that came convenient, and remained there
immovable, as regardless of the pressing
throng of passers-by, as a stubborn broad-
based stone in a stream is regardless of
the rushing current. And the passers-by
yielded as the water yields, and skirted
round these obstructive groups, or—if the
subject of their discourse struck them as
peculiarly interesting—lingered awhile to
listen to their talk with a grave placidity,
which might be characterised as good-
humoured, only that that word suggests
somewhat of merriment to an English ear,
and these people wore few smiles on their
brown faces.

Then came a vision of an open space
with houses on the left hand, and on the
right a steep incline covered with gravel,
on the summit of which stood a vast palace
(its façade seeming at the first glance
somewhat low for its width), flanked by
open arcades that advanced from the main
body of the building and embraced two
sides of the gravelled space. These arcades
were based on titanic blocks of rough stone,
and under the shade of the arches a military
band was making lively music, and a dense
mass of citizens with their wives and families
was listening to it, still with the same
nonchalant placidity.

Onward through a very narrow street
of gloomy, frowning, iron-barred stone
palaces; across a quaint bridge with shops
and houses on it, where the gems and gold
in the jewellers' windows flashed brightly
beneath the beetle-browed penthouse
shutters; past an open arch making a gap
in the line of buildings on the bridge,
through which was seen a glimpse of gold
and purple hills swimming in a haze of
evening sunshine; along a stone quay with
tall handsome houses on one hand, and
on the other a deep wide trench more than
half full of brownish sand, and with pools
of water here and there, and a shrunk
middle stream sluggishly crawling towards
the sea, which stream was the classic Arno,
nothing less!—past the end of another
bridge wide and handsome, at whose foot a
dense crowd was assembled in a small
piazzetta: some standing, some sitting on
stone benches, some perched on the parapet
overhanging the river, all watching the
passers-by on foot or in vehicles; down
another street which widened out into a
considerable space, and then contracted
again, and where a tall column stood, and
hackney coaches were ranged hard by, and
a vast old mediæval palace—more like a
fortress than a palace—heaved its bulk
above the narrow ways behind and about
it, like a giant raising his head and
shoulders out of a pressing throng to
breathe; and where a few elegantly dressed
gentlemen (rather attenuated about the
legs, and unwholesome about the skin, and
with a general vague air pervading them
—though some were handsome dark-eyed
youngsters, too—of having not quite enough
to eat, and considerably too much to
smoke) were lounging at the door of a
club-house, utterly unlike any club-house
known to dwellers beyond the Straits of
Dover, or perhaps nearer than that: and
at last the carriage drew up suddenly with
a mighty clatter at the door of a smart
shop, all French mirrors and gilding, where
fans were displayed for sale, and Paul
descended nimbly but decorously from the
box to hand "miladi" out.

All the sights that she had seen in her
rapid drive, were vividly impressed on
Veronica's eyes, but she had not had time to
give herself an account of them: to digest
them, as it were, in her brain. She felt