After the extinction of the family, Goritz came into the possession of the Emperors. The Venetians attempted to conquer it, and indeed appear to have held it for a short time. The town seems to have kept up its reputation of gaiety, as later chronicles speak of the lavish hospitality of the nobility residing there.
It is now quite a lively little place, with broad streets and good shops, and its outskirts are one charming garden full of pretty villas. There is not much to be seen in the way of antiquities—an old castle, by no means beautiful, perched on a hill, and some churches.
It was a very hot day. It is all very well to talk poetically of the sunny South, but for my part I wish it was not so confoundedly warm. We were taken to an antiquary's shop by my collaborator, and spent most of the morning there—she in looking over the things in a business-like manner, the G. L. in wandering aimlessly around, and I in sitting on the back stairs. (I found it the coolest place.)
We lunched with Count and Countess C., and, to speak truly, my pleasantest recollections of Goritz are associated with that lunch. I must say I had spent rather a miserable sort of morning, what with the heat and the antiquary's shop, but these troubles were soon forgotten on our arriving at their house.
It is an old-fashioned, rambling house, with low, dim rooms, furnished with a charming disregard to all pretence at style—old carved furniture side by side with little modern round tables, and valuable paintings of the last century hanging by oleographs of to-day. Every room, too, is a menagerie—dogs, cats, monkeys, snakes, birds of all sorts, are everywhere. I like a house of this kind—there is an entire absence of that bugbear Art (art with a big capital "A," you know), and most charming of all are its inhabitants. They are brother and sister, and both on the verge of eighty, the Countess the personification of goodness and the Lady Bountiful of the town, and the Count a curious mixture of the beau of the beginning of the century, poet, artist, and philosopher rolled into one. In spite of their age they both look marvellously young, and are more gay and active than the majority of young people I know.
We ate our lunch—which was excellent, by the way—in a little cool room that opens into the garden. The latter is as quaint as the house—roses and red currants grow together in luxuriant profusion. There is a delightful little arbour overgrown with white jasmine, and an old flight of steps that leads up to what was probably once a fortification, but is now a fine bed of cabbages with a border of hollyhocks, and the whole overshadowed by an enormous cherry-tree. Just outside the garden rises a big modern building, and from this, every now and then, a chorus of sweet girlish voices floated forth upon the still summer air. They were factory girls spinning silk, I was told, and singing over their work.
A CAST
After lunch we adjourned to the Count's study—the most remarkable room in the house perhaps. It is lower than the street, very large and vaulted, full of old furniture and curiosities of every kind; here and there casts of famous sculptures, very white against the dark walls; on the many tables a litter of books and papers, except on one, where we were told to admire a collection of paper-knives.