The glittering revels and water parties, however, the excursions to Chiogia, the fêtes on the Grand Canal, the masques on the Piazza di San Marco,--all these at length palled upon Marianna and upon me. We were away to our own little kingdom--Palaestro. What was Palaestro? The antithesis of the Regenstein, a pocket among the green Apennines, a clump of gray moss-clustered towers, and overhead the southern sky. Before the towers nestled the little village, tall balconied houses of dirty pink stucco, and dignified beggars dozing in the shade, waking only to whine their “caritas!” for a soldo. At night far down the valley pealed the silver call of the bell of the little brown church. By day the sun sprinkled his brightness over the fragrant orchards, lusty chestnut groves, and twisted oaks. Behind the old gray towers rose the newer palazzo of the lords of Palaestro,--a vast mansion, stately with Romanesque windows, Corinthian columns, and foliate sculpture. Pupils of Donatello had carved the marbles; Signor Andrea del Sarto had painted a _Pieta_ which looked down upon the great state gallery. Venetian glass, Syrian carpets, cases of antique medallions, vast quantities of silver plate,--these were a few of the things a stranger would have noted instantly. Our spacious halls and sunny logias looked abroad upon the old Etruscan country, and in them we could walk interminably, and take our ease. If one would turn Epicurean, Palaestro was indeed a retreat for philosophers! Thither we came by way of Ferrara, after enjoying hospitality at the court of its prince. His Eminence of Forli travelled in vast state in a carriage entirely white, with silver used in place of iron down to the smallest rail and a harness of silver likewise. I wished my own equipage to correspond, and I fear I made many drafts on my Venetian bankers in those days,--both for myself and for Madonna, who seemed daily more beautiful as she neared her native Southland. “Here is a fair binding for a rose,” I remember crying, as I flung around her neck a chain of Indian pearls straight from a Portuguese out of Calicut; and she took them with a gracious condescension, as if all I gave to her was but her due. The deft servants my kinsmen had sent from Florence soon put the palace in excellent order, and we made haste to summon certain old boon companions from Rome. Signor Campelli the distinguished Hellenist came, a bishop or two famous for wit, Latinity, and judgment of good cookery, an artist aiding Raffaello, and our particular friend Cardinal Rocca, as well as sundry ladies of whose charms I will not particularize. Our heads were full of Boccaccio’s _Decamerone_, and surely never was there a better place to imitate the luxurious revels of Pampinea, Pamfilo, and their peers. My _major domus_ was an adept in organizing entertainments. Every day we had new dishes, new excursions, new fêtes.