dinner (we were stopping at the Hotel de la Poste, a very nice inn
indeed) we took a boat and went across the lake to Angera, a little
town just opposite; it was in the Austrian territory, but they made
no delay about admitting us; the reason of our excursion was, that
we might go and explore the old castle there, which is seated on an
inconsiderable eminence above the lake. It affords an excellent
example of Italian domestic Gothic of the Middle Ages; San Carlo was
born and resided here, and, indeed, if saintliness were to depend
upon beauty of natural scenery, no wonder at his having been a
saint.

The castle is only tenanted by an old man who keeps the place; we
found him cooking his supper over a small crackling fire of sticks,
which he had lighted in the main hall; his feeble old voice chirps
about San Carlo this and San Carlo that as we go from room to room.
We have no carpets here--plain honest brick floors--the chairs,
indeed, have once been covered with velvet, but they are now so worn
that one can scarcely detect that they have been so, the tables
warped and worm-eaten, the few, that is, that remained there, the
shutters cracked and dry with the sun and summer of so many hundred
years--no Renaissance work here, yet for all that there was
something about it which made it to me the only really pleasurable
nobleman's mansion that I have ever been over; the view from the top
is superb, and then the row home to Arona, the twinkling lights
softly gleaming in the lake, the bells jangling from the tall and
gaudy campaniles, the stillness of the summer night--so warm and yet
so refreshing on the water; hush, there are some people singing--how
sweetly their voices are borne to us upon the slight breath of wind
that alone is stirring; oh, it is a cruel thing to think of war in
connection with such a spot as this, and yet from this very Angera