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Saturday being, I believe, the only day of the week on which visitors are admitted to the casino, there were many parties in carriages, artists on foot, gentlemen on horseback, and miscellaneous people, to whom the door was opened by a custode on ringing a bell. The whole of the basement floor of the casino, comprising a suite of beautiful rooms, is filled with statuary.
However natural might be the impulse which urged me to find Aurelia, fall at her feet, anoint them with my tears, I must withstand it until I could be sure of her honour saved. Now, was that surety to be gained first from her or first from her wrathful husband? I turned to the custode, who stood smiling and rubbing his chin in my doorway. I said, "Beppo, I am in great perplexity.
After taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, which summoned a man, who directed us towards a door in the side of the dome, where a custode was waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, people sometimes ride on donkeys.
The altar is still ready for service, and I am not sure that some of the wax tapers were not burning; but Lorenzo the Magnificent was nowhere to be seen. The custode now led us back through the Hall of Audience into a smaller room, hung with pictures chiefly of the Medici and their connections, among whom was one Carolina, an intelligent and pretty child, and Bianca Capella.
Besides, it's unfair to pass straight from the Greek mythology to the Bolognese. We were left to roam at will through the house; the custode shut us in and went to walk in the park. The apartments were all open, and I had an opportunity to reconstruct, from its <i>milieu</i> at least, the character of a morganatic queen.
It occupied a spacious oblong, had a fountain and statues, trees and flowers, and would certainly have been taken for the surface of the earth, had not the Custode proudly pointed out that it was on a level with the second floor, on which they stood.
The grave custode who showed us the curiosities, explaining every thing in phrases known by heart for years and making the same starts of admiration whenever he came to any thing peculiarly remarkable, singled us out as the two persons most worthy of attention.
After taking in the prospect on all sides we rang a bell, which summoned a man, who directed us towards a door in the side of the dome, where a custode was waiting to admit us. Hitherto the ascent had been easy, along a slope without stairs, up which, I believe, people sometimes ride on donkeys.
For the main palazzo, which during the day was often shown to sightseers, was locked at half-past five, only the two entresols one tenanted by Donna Laura, the other by the custode remaining accessible. The old man murmured something which Kitty did not understand, pointing at the same time to a door leading to the interior of the piano nobile.
Fra Angelico should have confined himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of touch and minute labor often produce an excellent effect. The custode informed us that there were more frescos of this pious artist in the interior of the convent, into which I might be allowed admittance, but not my wife. I declined seeing them, and heartily thanked heaven for my escape.
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