The
entrance from the street is through a long, arched doorway and
passage, giving admittance into a small, enclosed court; and deep
within the passage there is a very broad staircase, which branches
off, apparently, on one side, and leads to the height of the tower. At
the base of the tower, and along the front of the palace, the street
widens, so as to form something like a small piazza, in which there
are two or three bakers' shops, one or two shoe-shops, a
lottery-office, and, at one corner, the stand of a woman who sells, I
think, vegetables; a little further, a stand of oranges. Not so many
doors from the palace entrance there is a station of French soldiers
and a sentinel on duty. The palace, judging from the broad staircase,
the balustraded platform, the tower itself, and other tokens, may have
been a grand one centuries ago; but the locality is now a poor one,
and the edifice itself seems to have fallen to unaristocratic
occupants. A man was cleaning a carriage in the enclosed court-yard,
but I rather conceive it was a cab for hire, and not the equipage of a
dweller in the palace."
John Lothrop Motley, the historian of the Netherlands, had come to
Rome this winter and brought his family with him. I believe my father
had met Motley in America; at all events, we saw a good deal of him
now. He was an exceedingly handsome man, not only on account of the
beauty of physical features which marked him, but in the sensitiveness
and vividness of expression which constantly illuminated them.
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