Pencillings by the Way

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Excerpt: ...and fitted her beautiful head softly to the place. But where was "the tomb of the Capulets?" The beldame took me through a cabbage-garden, and drove off a donkey who was feeding on an artichoke that grew on the very spot. "Ecco!" said she, pointing to one of the slightly sunken spots on the surface. I deferred my belief, and paying an extra paul for the privilege of chipping off a fragment of the stone coffin, followed the cicerone. The tombs of the Scaligers were more authentic. They stand in the centre of the town, with a highly ornamental railing about them, and are a perfect mockery of death with their splendor. 257 If the poets and scholars whom these petty princes drew to their court had been buried in these airy tombs beside them, one would look at them with some interest. Now, one asks, "who were the Scaligers, that their bodies should be lifted high in air in the midst of a city, and kept for ages, in marble and precious stones?" With less ostentation, however, it were pleasant to be so disposed of after death, lifted thus into the sun, and in sight of moving and living creatures. I inquired for the old palace of the Capulets. The cicerone knew nothing about it, and I dismissed her and went into a café. "Two gentlemen of Verona" sat on different sides; one reading, the other asleep, with his chin on his cane-an old, white-headed man, of about seventy. I sat down near the old gentleman, and by the time I had eaten my ice, he awoke. I addressed him in Italian, which I speak indifferently; but, stumbling for a word, he politely helped me out in French, and I went on in that language with my inquiries. He was the very man-a walking chronicle of Verona. He took up his hat and cane to conduct me to casa Capuletti, and on the way told me the true history, as I had heard it before, which differs but little, as you know, from Shakspeare's version. The whole story is in the annuals. After a half hour's walk among the handsomer, and more...