Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 5.djvu/99

 WAS twenty-three years old when I set out for Rome. My father gave me a dozen letters of introduction, one of which, four pages long, was sealed. It was addressed: "To the Marquise Aldobrandi."

"You must write and tell me if the Marquise is still beautiful," said my father.

Now, from my earliest childhood, I had seen over the mantelpiece in his study a miniature of a very lovely woman, with powdered hair, crowned with ivy, and a tiger skin over her shoulder. Underneath was the inscription, "Roma, 18——." The dress struck me as so strange that I had many times asked who the lady was.

"It is a bacchante," was the only answer given me.

But this reply hardly satisfied me. I even suspected a secret beneath it, for, at this simple question, my mother would press her lips together and my father look very serious.

This time, when giving me the sealed letter,