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The facilities offered you for approaching the picture in such cases are a mockery of your irritated wish. You stand at tip-toe on a three-legged stool, you climb a rickety ladder, you almost mount upon the shoulders of the <i>custode</i>. You do everything but see the picture. You see just enough to be sure it's beautiful.
Federigo!" she called to an old man, the custode of the palace, who appeared at the magnificent door leading to the grand staircase. "Commanda, eccellenza!" The old man, bent and feeble, approached. He carried a watering-pot wherewith he was about to minister to some straggling flowers in the windows fronting the Grand Canal. A thin cat rubbed itself against his legs.
We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as saw it with our eyes. The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it with my hand.
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.
Hovering there in this consecrated neighbourhood, he might have passed for the genius of aesthetic hospitality if the genius of aesthetic hospitality were not commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a calico pocket-handkerchief and openly resentful of the divided franc. This analogy was made none the less complete by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted my embarrassed silence.
At the iron-grated door, however, we were met by two officials in uniform, who courteously informed us that there was nothing to be exhibited in the Bargello except an old chapel containing some frescos by Giotto, and that these could only be seen by making a previous appointment with the custode, he not being constantly on hand.
Dr. Lanfranchi had taken his keys with him and had left no directions. Donna Aurelia had been twice to the house since her first departure from it, and had been unable to get access. The second time of failing, said the custode, she had "lashed into the street like a serpent from a cage. And nobody," he added, "nobody in this town, and nobody under heaven's great eye, can say where she has gone.
It is open every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome restriction or supervision; and the fee, which custom requires the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect of making us feel that we are not intruders, nor received in an exactly eleemosynary way. The thing could not be better managed.
Returning, we stopped at the great castle of the Obizzi (now the property of the Duke of Modena), through which we were conducted by a surly and humorous custode, whose pride in life was that castle and its treasures, so that he resented as a personal affront the slightest interest in any thing else. He stopped us abruptly in the midst of the museum, and, regarding the precious antiques and curiosities around him, demanded: "Does this castle please you?" Then, with a scornful glance at us, "Your driver tells me you have been at Arqu
The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern, there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the Capitol.
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