Hans Riemann led Minna through one or two narrow streets and alleys, till they emerged in a small, quiet, but very pleasant-looking piazza, the exact locality of which I am not going to reveal; it was one of those which one is constantly coming upon in Rome in the most unexpected way--nooks which surprise and delight the old inhabitant almost as much as, perhaps more than, the hasty visitor, lying as they often do close beside or behind some well-known street or quarter which his steps have paced many a time, and with every winding of which he thought he was acquainted. Quaint and quiet, hoary and old, they hide themselves--known to those who inhabit them, and to few beside. It was on the sunny side of this piazza that the great brown palace was situated in which Madame Dietrich had a floor for her boarding-house. It is a large palace, though not one that is found on Baedeker’s plan of Rome, nor even is it mentioned in the compendious pages of Gsell-Fells. It was all quite new to Minna, and its aspect pleased her; a little quiet exclamation which broke from her lips as they entered it showed that she felt its charm. ‘Not bad, is it?’ said Hans Riemann, catching the sound of approval. ‘Here it is--Piazza Bocca della Verità, and here is the entrance to Casa Dietrich.’ He went in, under a great marble archway leading into a court, and she followed him. ‘Casa Dietrich is on the first _piano_,’ he observed. ‘That is one of its great merits. You will excuse me for thus singing its praises. You will find out its defects quickly enough.’ They climbed the stairs, broad and well laid, of a grayish-white marble, and dirty, of course, till they arrived at a door on the first _piano_, on which door was a brass plate with the inscription ‘Signora Dietrich,’ and before which lay a very dirty mat turned wrong way up, and inscribed ‘Salve.’ Hans Riemann pushed open the door, and waved his hand to Minna to pass on. She did so, and found herself in a large, well-proportioned hall, the floor of which was covered with straw-matting in tolerably good repair. Doors opened from it, of course, on all sides. There was a table in the middle of the space--at one side of the hall a marble-topped table against the wall, crowded with an array of lamps, large and small. This hall was a little dark, but not unfriendly in appearance. ‘We’ll go and sit in the _salon_ till the bell has rung,’ said Riemann, looking round and seeing no one. At that moment a waiter came into the hall--a young man with a handsome, silly, sentimental face, who looked vaguely round, and then gazed with bland benevolence on the pair. ‘Has the bell rung, Ettore?’ asked Riemann. ‘Signorino, no,’ replied Ettore in a soft voice, and with a _primo tenore_ kind of smile, and he shook his head.