CHAPTER XLII.
WAY in Mantua the weather was still chill and cheerless, the waters were still yellow with the snows of winter that melted into mud, the sun that warmed the green Maremma land and set a nest under every tussock of grass, and covered with blossoms every inch of the rich red soil, did not as yet shine on the melancholy city in the midst of the northern plains. White fogs drifted up over the surface of the lakes, and keen winds came over the Venetian Alps and sighed down the deserted arcades and through the lonely palaces.
At evening time a man would walk, the same way always, out westward by the Argine del Mulino, and would watch the
