With this fine idea in my head I left my rooms when I had first given my hair a finishing touch and had put on my new coat and yellow gloves. In this get-up, with my hat tilted over my ear and the faded rose in my button-hole, I turned my steps toward the street whose name I did not yet know, but which I had no difficulty in discovering. A notice stuck on a Madonna told me it was called "Il viccola di Madama Lucrezia." I was struck by this name at once, and recollected Leonardo da Vinci's portrait, together with the stories of presentiments and witchcraft that I had heard the evening before at the Marquise's. Then I remembered that some matches are made in heaven. Why should not my love be named Lucrezia? Why should she not be like the Lucrezia of the Aldobrandi collection? It was dawn. I was within two steps of a ravishing young lady, and no sinister thoughts mingled with the emotion I felt. I came to the house. It was No. 13. What an unlucky omen!... Alas! it hardly answered to the idea of it that I had conceived by night. It was certainly no palace, whatever else it might be. The walls surrounding it were blackened with age and covered with lichen, and behind these were some fruit trees badly eaten by caterpillars. In one corner of the inclosure was a pavilion one story high, with two windows looking on to the street; both were closed by old shutters furnished outside with a number of iron bars. The door was low, and over it was an old coat of arms almost worn away; it was shut, as on the previous night, by a large padlock which was attached to a chain. Over the door was a notice written in chalk, which read, "House to Let or to be Sold." However, I had not made a mistake. The houses were too few for confusion to be possible. It was indeed my padlock, and, furthermore, two rose leaves on the pavement, near the door, indicated the exact spot where I had received the evidences of love from my well-beloved, and they also proved that the pavement in front of the house was rarely swept. I asked several poor people in the neighbourhood if they could tell me where the keeper of this mysterious house lived. "Not anywhere here," they replied curtly. My question seemed to displease those to whom I put it; and this piqued my curiosity still further. Going from door to door I finished by going into a kind of dark cave, where was an old woman, who might have been suspected of witchcraft, for she had a black cat, and was cooking some mysterious decoction in a cauldron. "You want to see over the house of Madam Lucrezia?" she said. "I have the key of it." "All right. Show me over." "Do you wish to take it?" she asked, smiling with a dubious air. "Yes, if it suits me." "It will not suit you; but, see, will you give me a _paul_ if I show it you?" "Most willingly." Upon this assurance she rose slowly from her stool, unhooked a very rusty key from the wall, and led me to No. 13. "Why," I said, "do they call this the house of Lucrezia?"