"The city lay above the valley, white-walled and silent. I remember touching with my stick what appeared to be a streak of moonlight that had filtered through the branches of a tree, when a beautiful little serpent uncoiled himself and slipped away into the shadows. Well, the distance was greater than I had supposed, and the hour was late, so that by the time I reached the city gate, I found it closed for the night. There was nothing to do but to sit down and wait for morning. I found a large, flat rock which seemed still to hold some of the heat of the sun, and looked out over the surrounding country. Just think of my situation! There I was, a young man fresh from America, full of the most extravagant romance, sitting alone in the moonlight before the gate of a mediaeval walled city, and a city, too, so rich with traditions that I grew dazed in trying to recall them. It may be that the moon became hypnotic in its influence, for I lay down and stared up at it like one bewitched. "I don't know how long a time passed in this manner before I was aroused by the appearance of an old peasant around the corner of my rock, bending under a huge bundle of faggots. I addressed myself to him in the best Italian I could then command, and asked whether it were possible to enter the city--_entrare la citta_. He rung a bell by pulling a rope that hung down over the wall, and we went in together. Now, you know, I would have remained there all night without even looking for such an obvious way of arousing the gatekeeper." "Yes," he continued, in answer to an appreciative comment from his listener, "you would have enjoyed it,--any one with a soul would have enjoyed it. And further adventures were in store for me in that ancient town. I remember particularly a girl who waited on the table at my _albergo_ and accompanied me at times on my tours of inspection. From her I learned more of the history of the place, and upon her I practised most diligently my Italian. There was one mystery to which she would come back again and again. If I was an American, and poor, how did it happen that I was not an artist? She would turn her lovely eyes upon me twenty times a day and ask me this question. A charming experience, was it not? Long afterward I met an American professor on one of the boats in Holland, and when we compared notes on our travels, I discovered that he remembered that girl, too, and her eyes. Just think of the number of romantic young travellers upon whom she had turned them in that appealing way of hers!" As his companion listened to this recital, he was impressed not so much by the story itself as by the essential happiness of the narrator. Here was a nature as untrammelled as the wind, that delighted to roam from land to land. Local interests, people, events, might hold him for a time, but presently he would be gone in search of new adventures. If he loved Felicity Wycliffe, Leigh reflected, it was only as a wanderer loves.