Gatteria del Spropositi, a monstrous travesty of the story of Lucrece. One of the castrati--Pamfilo by name--played the part of Lisetta, "una putta di undici anni," and exhibited the most remarkable turn of satirical observation and humour I have ever seen before or since. Horrible in a manner as it was, it would have redeemed any performance. This demon of ingenuity and wit was little more than fourteen years old, and sang like an angel of Paradise. Another of them was the Lucrezia, the Roman matron--put into the short skirts, spangles, and mischievous peering glances of Colombina. Belviso would have sustained it had he been present. Adone, his understudy, took his place. My own share in the mummery was humble and confusing. In toga and cothurnus I had to read a pompous prologue, and did it amid shouts of "Basta! basta!" from the audience. I don't believe that I was more thankful than they were when I had done. The less I say about the rest of the evening and night the better. The people of Certaldo more than maintain the popular reputation of their great townsman, Boccaccio. They are as light-hearted, as impertinent, as amorous as he; and they diverted themselves with our company in a manner which did credit to his example. Such things, I hope I may say, were very little to my taste; but it was necessary for me not to seem singular, and I fancy that I did not. After a similar night's entertainment at Poggibonsi we set out, intending to be at Siena that same night. I need hardly say that the so near prospect filled me with various and contending emotions. I might hope, in the first place, to find Belviso there, returned with Virginia, my faithful and tender wife. To know her safe, to have her by my side, to be conscious, as I could not fail to be, of her deep and ardent love for me testified in every glance of her eyes--such could not fail to be a satisfaction to any honest, any sensible man. Such, too, I hope they were. But I must needs confess that not this confident expectation (for confident I was of Belviso's success) alone moved me and elated me at the moment. No, it is the truth that, the nearer I came to Siena, the more I realised the abiding influence of Aurelia upon my heart and conscience. I could not but tremble at the thought that in so few hours I should be treading the actual earth which her feet had lightly pressed during the years when she must have been at her happiest, and if not also at her loveliest--since when was she not at that?--assuredly at her purest and most radiant hour; before she had been sullied by the doctor's possessory rights, before she had been hurt by my dastardly advances. This, then, this it was which really affected me, to feel like some pilgrim of old, to Loreto, may be, or Compostella, to Walsingham, to Rome--nay, to the very bourne and goal of every Christian's desire, Jerusalem, the Holy City, itself--to feel, I say, singularly uplifted,