Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/92

 and rich people, whose tastes were dignified, and whose habits of life were generous.

We were promised a paper that would give us free course to Venice—for our Consul was at that city—and we were to be transferred to him, and meanwhile, our loss was made known in the country about. But, though the paper was promised, one or another of my friends was employed the whole morning in getting it properly signed. These delays were vexatious, more from the uncertainty that hung about the whole transaction, which kept us in attendance and perplexity. There was no help. We rambled to the garden, or walled podere, in which there is an open fosse, and an old sort of sarcophagus, which they show as Juliet’s tomb. That Juliet lived and died, as Baldelli recounts, there can be little doubt; but it is not likely that this was “the tomb of the Capulets.” Still such a scene—a garden, with its high antique walls, its Italian vegetation, and the blue sky, cloudless above—was a scene familiar to Juliet; and her spirit might hover here, even if her fair form was sepulchred elsewhere. It was a long walk thence to the tombs of the Scaligers. The most fairy architecture—not dark and Gothic, nor immured within the walls of a church;—a small open court encloses these elegant sepulchres.

At length we obtained the paper, and set out.