parapet gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep him in sight;
I confess that I passed ten very nervous minutes. He recovered himself
at last, and went his way, slowly and with hanging head.

That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his long-
garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort and hazard
of production, seemed at first reason enough for his continued silence
and absence; but as day followed day without his either calling or
sending me a line, and without my meeting him in his customary haunts, in
the galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between the
Arno side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which, along the drive of
the Cascine, throws the fair occupants of barouche and phaeton into such
becoming relief--as for more than a week I got neither tidings nor sight
of him, I began to fear that I had fatally offended him, and that,
instead of giving a wholesome impetus to his talent, I had brutally
paralysed it. I had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My
stay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was important that,
before resuming my journey, I should assure myself of the truth.
Theobald, to the last, had kept his lodging a mystery, and I was
altogether at a loss where to look for him. The simplest course was to
make inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato Vecchio, and I confess that
unsatisfied curiosity as to the lady herself counselled it as well.
Perhaps I had done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh and
fair as be conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious to behold once
more the ripe enchantress who had made twenty years pass as a
twelvemonth. I repaired accordingly, one morning, to her abode, climbed
the interminable staircase, and reached her door. It stood ajar, and as
I hesitated whether to enter, a little serving-maid came clattering out
with an empty kettle, as if she had just performed some savoury errand.
The inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule and