and portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gallant coats

of mail, and patrician ladies in stunning costumes of centuries ago.

But, of course, the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and

might not have known enough to ask us to dinner if they had been at home,

and so all the grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their

grim pictures of dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the dust of

bygone centuries upon them, seemed to brood solemnly of death and the

grave, and our spirits ebbed away, and our cheerfulness passed from us.

We never went up to the eleventh story. We always began to suspect

ghosts. There was always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who

handed us a program, pointed to the picture that began the list of the

salon he was in, and then stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his

petrified livery till we were ready to move on to the next chamber,

whereupon he marched sadly ahead and took up another malignantly

respectful position as before. I wasted so much time praying that the

roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that I had but little

left to bestow upon palace and pictures.

And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the

guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far

as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside

himself could talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of

Christopher Columbus, and after we had reflected in silent awe before it

for fifteen minutes, he said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but

of Columbus' grandmother! When we demanded an explanation of his

conduct

183

The Innocents Abroad