THE "VICCOLO" OF MADAM LUCREZIA
I WAS twenty-three years old when I set out for Rome. My father gave me a dozen letters of introduction, one of which, four pages long, was sealed. It was addressed: "To the Marquise Aldobrandi."
"You must write and tell me if the Marquise is still beautiful," said my father.
Now, from my earliest childhood, I had seen over the mantelpiece in his study a miniature of a very lovely woman, with powdered hair, crowned with ivy, and a tiger skin over her shoulder. Underneath was the inscription, "Roma, 18——." The dress struck me as so strange that I had many times asked who the lady was.
"It is a bacchante," was the only answer given me.
But this reply hardly satisfied me. I even suspected a secret beneath it, for, at this simple question, my mother would press her lips together and my father look very serious.
This time, when giving me the sealed letter,
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