Another interesting personage was the German painter Reinhardt, a man of very advanced age, who was called at that time the father of the artists.
But this book is not intended as a mere catalogue.
Through the kindness of a friend whose acquaintance we made at Lucca, we had ingress afforded us to many of the religious ceremonies in the Sistine and elsewhere, from which the generality of travellers were usually excluded, and letters of introduction also formed passports to the palaces of the chief Roman nobility, so that the Carnival that year was one continued round of gaiety and festivity for me and mine.
LEAVE ROME FOR NAPLES
After some delightful Spring days passed in the neighbourhood with the Boddingtons, at Tivoli and Albano, we travelled to Naples, where those dear friends soon rejoined us. Here we took up our abode, in a very pretty apartment on the ground floor of the Palazzo Calabritti, just opposite the entrance to the delightful gardens of the Villa Reale.
CHAPTER XIV
SUMMER AT NAPLES
We made rather a sad entrance into our new abode, for we had not been settled above two days when the portress appeared to me with a very troubled face, and asked me to come and see her Giulia, who, she feared, was dying. The poor woman was in dreadful grief, having lost another daughter not many months before. I accompanied her to the sick room, where I found a very pretty girl, by whose bedside I took my place. With that trustfulness which is a leading characteristic in young Italians, she took my hand, and addressed me as if I had been an old friend. I tried to speak cheerfully to her, but there was something so spiritual and far away in the look of her pleading eyes that it failed me to hold out to her any hope of recovery.
She had only lately fallen ill, she told me, but knew that she was dying, for her sister’s last words to her were “Tornero per te.”[[33]] She scarcely knew at the time what was meant by these ominous words.
[33]. “I will return for thee.”