the best adapted for lazy people. We engaged rooms at Danielli’s, and unpacked all our clothes, knowing that we were not likely to make another move until the heat should drive us away. The first few days, I remember, were not altogether full of enjoyment for one of us. My excellent Anne, who has all her brother’s virtues, without his failings, would have scouted the notion of allowing any dread of physical fatigue to stand between her and the churches and pictures which she had come all the way from England to admire; and, as Venice was an old haunt of mine, she very excusably expected me to act as cicerone to her, and allowed me but little rest between the hours of breakfast and of the _table d’hote_. At last, however, she conceived the modest and felicitous idea of making a copy of Titian’s “Assumption”; and, having obtained the requisite permission for that purpose, set to work upon the first of a long series of courageous attempts, all of which she conscientiously destroyed when in a half-finished state. At that rate it seemed likely that her days would be fully occupied for some weeks to come; and I urged her to persevere, and not to allow herself to be disheartened by a few brilliant failures; and so she hurried away, early every morning, with her paint-box, her brushes, and her block, and I was left free to smoke my cigarettes in peace, in front of my favourite cafe on the Piazza San Marco. I was sitting there one morning, watching, with half-closed eyes, the pigeons circling overhead under a cloudless sky, and enjoying the fresh salt breeze that came across the ruffled water from the Adriatic, when I was accosted by one of the white-coated Austrian officers by whom Venice was thronged in those days, and whom I presently recognised as a young fellow named Von Rosenau, whom I had known slightly in Vienna the previous winter. I returned his greeting cordially, for I always like to associate as much as possible with foreigners when I am abroad, and little did I foresee into what trouble this fair-haired, innocent-looking youth was destined to lead me.