chief features of the site, situated as they are at the foot of the hill on which is perched the castle, and from where Ruskin wrote the beautiful description of the view obtained from here, and which is given in chapter x., p. 229.
In 1885 Count Antonio Pompei, the last direct descendant of this great family, died. These Counts of Illasi, who had received their title from the Venetian Republic early in the sixteenth century (with the obligation of offering every year a wax taper of the value of a ducat to the Church of St Mark in Venice), received many and lasting honours from other states and sovereigns. The Emperor Charles V. conferred the rights of citizens of Milan on them; the same privilege with regard to the town of Mantua was granted by Duke Ferdinand Charles; and Henry IV. allowed them to quarter the lilies of France on their shield. This last Count of Illasi (whose family is now merged in that of the Counts Perez) was a worthy descendant of a long line of jurisconsults, lawyers, writers, poets, ambassadors, generals and knights. He was himself an archæologist, and a writer too on such matters. He had been present in his youth at the demolition of an old wall of the Castle of Illasi, and on that occasion came across a sad and undoubted evidence of a tragedy that had occurred in his family many hundreds of years previously. The skeleton of a woman was found in this wall, heavily laden with chains, and the story goes that it was certainly that of the Countess Ginevra, the wife of Count Girolamo Pompei, whose infidelity to her husband had been avenged in this awful way. No hope of escape for the wife whom he knew false! No mercy for her who had proved unfaithful! Only the chains weighing heavily on her young and lovely limbs; the wall slowly closing in upon her; the lingering death of agony and starvation; the remorse when alone she faced her doom;—can a fate more terrible be imagined? or a vengeance more complete have been exacted?
The last castle on the left bank of the Adige, that of Soave, is without doubt the most interesting of all these strongholds, and should certainly not be left unvisited. The tramway which starts just outside the Porta Vescovo takes one there in a good hour. The journey lies through a flat country, fertile with corn, maize, and vines, and leading up to the hills which rise “on and always on” till they are lost in the distant horizon. A short walk under an avenue of “Paulownia Imperialis” leads to the old town, which is girt with a circuit of brick battlemented walls, perfect both as to condition and construction. A grand double archway, on which is carved the arms of the Scaligers, opens into the town, while at its further end is a stone pathway which leads up a steep incline to the castle perched on the top. The position is splendid, overlooking miles of plain, and bounded on the northern side by the heights of Monte Lessini. The building takes us back in fancy to some of our old Norman fortresses, for here too is the moat, the drawbridge, the portcullis, and all that goes to form a feudal stronghold. The moat though is now dried up and overgrown with vegetation, and the walls are of brick as opposed to stone, albeit of such beautiful masonry as to arouse no sense of disparaging comparison. Crossing the drawbridge under a grand archway with the portcullis set in the brickwork, we gain the first courtyard, which opens again through another doorway into a second and inner courtyard. The banqueting hall probably stood here of old, or it may be the kitchen, to judge from the outline of a huge chimney which can yet be traced clearly and which evidently once towered high up into the air. From here, stooping low under a small archway, we come into an enclosed square, not large as to circumference, but shut in to the extent of some sixty feet in height. Prisoners or criminals were thrown down into this hold, and those who did not die of the shock or fall (and they would be the exceptions) were left to linger till death released them from their sufferings. A fine old well stands in the last and inner courtyard, its edges worn away inside with the marks of the ropes which for centuries have performed their office of drawing water—and very good water too—from the old well. On the ground floor of this portion of the castle is a vaulted chamber said to have been the guard-room, and from there a narrow staircase leads up to the only part of the building that would be habitable did its owner choose to live in it. The rooms, consisting of a bedroom, sitting-room and dining-room, are kept though more for show than for use; and from the dining-room one passes through a small anteroom up a narrow stone staircase on to the battlements. An excellent view is had from here of the castle itself, its turrets, inner courts, grass slopes, and steep parapets, to the little town sheltering in true feudal fashion at the foot of the castle. The city walls are also clearly discernible from this height, forming as they do an uninterrupted square of turreted walls, each turret or tower equidistant from its neighbour, and presenting as perfect an example of a mediæval stronghold as can well be seen anywhere. The good woman who acts as “custode” has a ready story of how the Scaligers who built and owned this fortress existed long before the birth of Christ, and had indeed inhabited it in those far-off ages. The real tale is that the name of Soave came from a colony of Swabians (Svevi or Suabi) who came into Italy, with Otho I. of Germany, and settled there. It is also very probable that the Romans had once built on those heights and laid the foundations of the citadel which the Scaligers perfected in after times. Such an hypothesis gains ground from the number of Roman coins, pins, fibulæ, inscriptions, stones, and so forth that have been found in and around Soave, and that are all collected and kept in the old castle. Its present state of preservation is owing to the Senator Camuzzoni, whose one thought and care has been to restore the castle on its original lines and guard it intact from injury or decay.
Soave is also celebrated for an excellent white wine which hails from there; by no means feeble as to character, and as famous in its way as its red neighbour from the Val Policella. Another white wine, also very good, is made at Soave, called Vino Santo. This however is sweet, and commends itself more as a liqueur than as a beverage. The little town too is full of interest, and many an hour might be whiled away in this mediæval hamlet did the castles lying on the right bank of the Adige not claim a passing notice in their turn.
The first of these in geographical order is the castle of Villafranca Veronese, so called to distinguish it from the other seven and twenty Villafrancas which are said to lie scattered over the face of the globe. It lies between Verona and Mantua, and owes its fame in modern days to the peace signed here, 12th July 1859, between the Emperors of Austria and France, when Lombardy was ceded to Italy, and a very forward step taken in the events which culminated in Italian unity and independence. The cause that led originally to the erection of the fortress was as follows:—The Veronese had built a castle at Ostiglia on the Po, a castle that was of all-important moment to them from a military and commercial point of view. The frequent
