[19] Near Rimini in Romagna. It was in this castle that the famous Cagliostro perished; it is said in the district that he was suffocated there.
[20] A Roman prelate would no doubt not be fit to command an army corps bravely, as was more than once done by a general of division who was minister of police at Paris at the time of Mallet’s attempt; but he never would have let himself be held up in his own house so easily. He would have been too much afraid of being quizzed by his colleagues. A Roman who knows that he is hated does not go about without being well armed.
The writer has not thought it necessary to justify some other little differences between the ways of doing and speaking at Paris and those at Rome. So far from toning down these differences, he has thought it right to state them boldly. The Romans whom he describes have not the honour of being Frenchmen.
THE CHILD WITH THE BREAD SHOES
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Listen to this story which the grandmothers of Germany tell their grandchildren,—Germany, a beautiful country of legends and dreams, where the moonlight, playing on the mists of Old Rhine, creates a thousand fantastic visions.
At the end of the village a poor woman lived alone in a humble cottage: the house was very poor and contained but the barest necessities in the way of furniture.
An old bed with twisted columns whence hung serge curtains yellow with age; a bread-bin; a walnut chest, polished till it shone, but the numerous worm-eaten holes of which were stopped with wax, indicated a long period of service; an arm-chair, covered with tapestry from which the colours had faded and which had been worn thin by the shaking head of the old grandmother; a spinning-wheel polished with use: that was all.
We were about to forget a child’s cradle, quite new, very cosily padded and covered with a pretty flowered counterpane stitched by an indefatigable needle, that of a mother ornamenting the crib of her little Jesus.
All the wealth in the little house was centred there.
The child of a burgomaster or of an aulic councillor could not have been more softly couched. Sacred prodigality, sweet folly of the mother who deprives herself of everything to provide a little luxury, in the midst of her poverty, for her dear nursling!