"There's something pathetic about old, obsolete forts as grand as Peschiera," Mr. Barrymore said to me. "So much thought and money spent, the best military science of the day employed to make a stronghold as feeble against modern arms as a fort of cards. Such a fortress seems like an aged warrior, past his fighting days, or an old hunting dog, as keen on the chase as ever, poor fellow, but too old to move from before the fire, where he can only lie and dream of past triumphs." "I was thinking almost exactly the same!" I exclaimed, and I liked Mr. Barrymore all the better; for it draws you nearer to a person when you find that your thoughts resemble each other in shape and colour. Oddly enough, it's often so with Mr. Barrymore and me; which is the reason it's so agreeable to have the place beside him when he drives. No more than half a dozen miles from Peschiera we saw the Tower of San Martino, raised on the great battlefield of Solferino. By this time we had left the lake behind; but we had exchanged the low, amethyst mountains for tall white ones, glorious pinnacles of snow which were the higher Austrian Alps. Everything was impressive on this road to Verona, even the farmhouses, of an entirely different character from those of the "yesterday country;" and then, at last, we came in sight of Verona herself, lying low within a charmed circle of protecting hills, on which castles and white villas looked down from among cypresses and rose-pink almond trees. I was glad that the gateway by which we entered Verona was the finest through which we had passed, for though Mr. Barrymore called the town "an inn for the great travellers of history," it was more for me. It was the home of romance; for was it not Juliet's home and Romeo's? That gateway, and the splendid old crenellated bridge of dark red brick (toning deliciously with the clear, beryl-green of the swift-rushing Adda) made a noble, preface for the city. And then, each old, old street into which we turned was a new joy. What lessons for modern architects in those time-softened brick facades, with the moulded arches of terra-cotta framing the green open-work of the shutters! I began to feel a sense of exaltation, as if I had listened to an anthem played by a master hand on a cathedral organ. I couldn't have told any one, but I happened to glance at Mr. Barrymore, and he at me, just as he had driven into the _piazza_ where Dante's house looks down over the tombs of the Scaligers. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, I know. I always feel like that, too, when I come here--but even more in Venice." "How _am_ I feeling?" I asked, smiling with him. "Oh, a little bit as if your soul had got out of your body and taken a bath in a mountain spring, after you'd been staggering up some of the steep paths of life in the dust and sun. Isn't that it?" "Yes. Thank you," I answered. And we seemed to understand each other so well that I was almost frightened.