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The late Queen Victoria saw clearly the parallel, and as hereditary custodian of Ireland, Her Majesty protested against the effort then being made to release Italy from an Austrian prison, when she herself was so hard put to it to keep Ireland in an English jail. Writing to her Prime Minister on July 25th, 1848, Her Majesty said:
I attribute these frescos to a later date than that of the poet's residence, but the portrait over the door of the bedroom inside of the chamber, was of his own time, and taken from him the custodian said. As it seemed to look like all the Petrarchian portraits, I did not remark it closely, but rather turned my attention to the walls of the chamber, which were thickly over-scribbled with names.
He was confronted, too, with the immediate results of his recent folly. The hospital funds, of which he was the custodian, had disappeared. He knew that Hickey had robbed him of most of them, but in order to recover them he would have to acknowledge his crime of using them for his own ends.
And we went through chapels, and music rooms, right up immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of presses, with heavily-shuttered windows all round. And Florence became positively electric. She told the tired, bored custodian what shutters to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in palpable shafts into the dim old chamber.
"The circle on the pavement," said the custodian, "marks the place where Peter stood with the soldiers, warming his hands by the little fire which they had kindled in a brazier, when he was accused by the maid of being a companion and follower of the Prisoner then on trial before the High Priest.
The custodian takes the visitor through every apartment of it, giving the history of the same and of numerous articles of furniture and Shakesperian relics, &c., which constitute a considerable museum.
As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt of my egotistical self-projection, the custodian of my sexual pride, and drew together and became over and above this a personality of her own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only to meet again. I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world love-making so that it may be understandable now.
Amid such surroundings, we hardly heard the old custodian as he pointed out the different apartments and told us the story of the palmy days of the abbey and of its final doom at the relentless hands of Henry VIII. Near by is a tiny church, which no doubt had served the people of the neighborhood as a place of worship since the abbey fell into ruin.
There were other houses like it up and down the coast. Some had remained unused for years, desolate and forlorn, no unhappy ship having foundered or struck the breakers within their reach; others had been in constant use. The crews were gathered from the immediate neighborhood by the custodian, who was the only man to receive pay from the Government.
The exhibited autographs include Titian's hand large and forcible; Leopardi's, very neat; Goldoni's, delicate and self-conscious; Galileo's, much in earnest; and a poem by Tasso with myriad afterthoughts. But the one idea of the custodian is to get you to admire the famous Grimani Breviary not alas! in the original, which is not shown, but in a coloured reproduction.
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