Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/354

346 the back staircase to the ground-floor. We at first fancied that this apparently surreptitious proceeding was perhaps traceable to the awe entertained by the bachelor brothers for their unruly tenants; but we were relieved from the sense of acting in a style bordering on poltroonery, by finding that the principal staircase had been boarded up to preserve its marble steps and sides from injury. On arriving at the foot we found ourselves in a spacious hall, opposite the approach to the grand staircase, which looked like an archway built for giants, toweringly defined above the scaffold-planks by which it was barricaded. Many doors opened from this hall, to each of which, in turn, one of the bachelor brothers applied successive keys from a ponderous bunch that he held in his hand. These doors led to vast suites of apartments, all unfurnished, like the upper rooms, with the exception of one suite, which the brothers had lent to a friend of theirs, and which was sparely supplied with some old Italian furniture, of so antique a fashion that each article might have been a family heirloom ever since the times of that famous Genoese gentleman, Christopher Columbus. One peculiarity the four remarked, which spoke volumes for the geniality of the climate: in all this huge rambling edifice they saw only one room which could boast of a fireplace. The sun's warmth evidently supplied all the heat necessary, and—as might be conjectured from its other peculiarities as well as this—anything like what the English call "the joys and comforts of the domestic hearth" seemed an impossible attainment in this dreary old palazzo. The social amenities must wither in its desolate atmosphere, and dwindle to chill shadows, like the ghosts that haunt the attic story.

To complete the air of saddening vacancy that clung like a damp to the really arid white walls, when the brothers led us down a wide staircase to the vaulted space beneath the basement, we came upon some hundreds of small bird-cages, containing each a miserable linnet, titmouse, or finch, condemned to chirp out its wretched existence in this airless underground region. In reply to our pitying exclamation, we were told that the bachelors' friend who occupied the corner apartment on the ground-floor was a great sportsman, and devotedly fond of la caccia; that these unhappy little prisoners were employed by him in the season as decoy-birds; that they were kept in these dungeons during the other months of the year; and that they were to make them sing better and be more serviceable at the period when he needed them. As we looked shudderingly at these forlorn little creatures, and expressed our commiseration at their fate, the younger brother stepped forward, and, examining one of the cages, in which sat hunched up in one corner a stiff lump of feathers, coolly announced that "this goldfinch" was dead.

It was with a feeling of relief that we left the death-released bird, and the vaults beneath the old palazzo, to return once more to the fresh air and the breathing-space of the broad earth and sky. Our next visit was to the bachelor brothers' factory, which was for the fabrication of wax candles. Adjoining this was a terrace-plot of ground, dotted over with what looked like Liliputian tombstones. We were beginning to wonder whether this were a cemetery for the dead birds,—speculating on the probability that these might be the monumental tributes placed over their graves by the sportsman friend of the two brothers,—when the elder informed us that this was the place they used for bleaching the wax, and that the square stones we saw were the supports on which rested the large flat stands whereon it was laid to whiten in the sun. From this terrace-plot of ground,—which projected in a narrowish green ledge, skirted by a low ivy-grown wall, over the sea,—we beheld a prospect of almost matchless beauty. Before us stretched a wide expanse of Mediterranean waters; to the extreme left was just visible the bold rocky point