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WAS twenty-three years old when I set out for Rome. My father gave me a dozen letters of introduction, one alone of which, that was no less than four pages long, was sealed. It bore the address: "For the Marquise Aldobrandi."

"I wish you to write," my father said to me, "and let me know if the marquise still retains her good looks."

Now, ever since childhood I had been accustomed to see a miniature that hung in my father's study, over the fireplace, the portrait of a very pretty woman, wearing her hair in powder and crowned with an ivy-wreath and with a tiger-skin thrown over her shoulders. At the bottom was the inscription: "Roma, 18—." Attracted by the singularity of the costume, I had many a time inquired who the lady was. The answer always came:

"It is a bacchante."

But this answer was not at all satisfactory to me; I even suspected the existence of a secret, for at that question, innocent as it was, my mother would purse