Italian castles and country seats . hromatic. Great was the excitement when our auto swunginto the gate of the tiny city, but one of the menquickly came forward, hat in hand, and offered toshow us all about. There was a beautiful Madonnaby Giovanni Sanzio, Raphaels father, in an innerroom of the Municipio, and some excellent furniture,that I should love to have bought, in the keepersrooms on the first floor. We signed our names in thevisitors book that is placed in the little family chapelof the castle, where the della Robbia forms a wonder-fully beautiful altar-piece. As we turned to go, thec
Italian castles and country seats . hromatic. Great was the excitement when our auto swunginto the gate of the tiny city, but one of the menquickly came forward, hat in hand, and offered toshow us all about. There was a beautiful Madonnaby Giovanni Sanzio, Raphaels father, in an innerroom of the Municipio, and some excellent furniture,that I should love to have bought, in the keepersrooms on the first floor. We signed our names in thevisitors book that is placed in the little family chapelof the castle, where the della Robbia forms a wonder-fully beautiful altar-piece. As we turned to go, thecustodian, looking at our signatures, exclaimed, *TheirExcellencies are really from America! I assured himthat we were, and after several grunts and ejacula-tions of surprise, he said, meditatively, as if trying toconvince himself, Well, well, I never thought anyAmericans would come here. What a long journeyyou must have had! But our della Robbia is verybeautiful, of course. Although from the ramparts we had a glorious and [62] ^^^^. < ^ < ^ o ^ ^ o O !<, o ?:; ?J o < c AND COUNTRY SEATS extensive view, the peasants views had evidently beenconfined to the old towered wall that still encircles,unbroken, this small city of the Middle Ages, once thedomain of Giovanni Sforza, the unfortunate first hus-band of poor Lucrezia Borgia. As we looked toward Pesaro, the town by the seafrom which Giovanni Sforza came, I could not butthink of the one year of tranquillity of poor gentle,ill-used Lucrezias youth. The recent researches showher to have been such a difi^erent character from thatportrayed by Victor Hugo and others, and all ourscorn turns to pity when we read how her dreadfulfather. Pope Alexander VI, and more dreadful brother,Caesar, used her gentle personality to cloak their ter-rible crimes. She, poor child, was powerless to doaught but accept the calumny heaped upon her, butonce given a chance, she seems to have been a modelof sweetness and amiability. The Chevalier
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