guided it looked like a mountebank in a garb rusty like withered leaves.
Like withered leaf, too, he danced up the hillside, scaling the long
array of steps which led through the olives toward Castel del Monte.
Some of his antics amused me, until I saw that none of them amused
himself, and that through all the contortions of his face his eyes
remained fixed, joyless, tragic.

Castel del Monte sat on the hill-top, eminent, far-beholding.
Vine-stakes ran up hill and down dale, all about it. White houses were
sprinkled here and there. As we ascended, the sea sank beneath, and the
shining dashes of the wave-crests diminished to sparkling pin-points.
Then with oriental suddenness the sun went down. Still upward fared the
joyless _farceur_, and still upon the soles of my feet, and with my
pilgrim staff in my hand, I followed.

Sometimes the sprays of fragrant blossom swept across our faces.
Sometimes a man stepped out from the roadside and challenged; but, on
receiving a word of salutation from my knave, he returned to his place
with a sharp clank of accoutrement.

White blocks of building moved up to us in the equal dusk of the
evening, took shape for a moment, and vanished behind us. The summit of
the mountain ceased to frown. The strain of climbing was taken from the
mechanic movement of the feet. The mule sent a greeting to his kind; and
some other white mountain, larger, more broken as to its sky-line, moved
in front of us and stayed.

"Castel del Monte!" said the muleteer, wrinkling all the queer puckered
leather of his visage in the strong light which streamed out as the
great door opened. A most dignified Venetian senator, in the black and