Page:Tales of Today.djvu/133

Rh again, with no better result. Three or four evenings in succession, on my way home from the Aldobrandi palace, did I stop and cool my heels beneath those windows, but always to no purpose. The mysterious inhabitant of the house No. 13 was beginning to fade from my memory when, passing through the viccolo about midnight, I distinctly heard a low woman's laugh behind the window-shutter at the very spot where the fair flower-girl had appeared to me. Twice I heard that low laugh, and I could not help being a little frightened when I saw a troop of cowled penitents, bearing wax-candles and conveying a dead body to the grave, make their appearance at the other end of the street. When they were gone by I posted myself as sentry beneath the window, but then there was nothing more to be heard. I tried throwing pebbles, I even used my voice with more or less distinctness; no one appeared, and a shower coming up just then obliged me to beat a retreat.

I am ashamed to tell how many times I stopped in front of that accursed house, without ever succeeding in solving the riddle that was bothering me. Only on one occasion did I pass through the viccolo of Madame Lucrezia in company with Don Ottavio and his inseparable abbé.

"There is the house of Lucrèce," said I.

I noticed that he changed color.

"Yes," he replied, "an ill-defined popular tradition has it that Lucrezia Borgia had her 'little house’ here. If those walls could only speak what horrors they might reveal! And yet, my friend, when I compare that time with our own, I can scarce help regretting it. There were Romans still in the days of