the Duchess of Parma. Here was heard the voice of cooks and of scullions,
and the ecstasies of helpless voracity in which we sometimes beheld this
old lady were fearful to witness. Nor did we find her more comfortable in
our own kitchen, where we often saw her. The place itself is weird and
terrible--low ceiled, with the stone hearth built far out into the room,
and the melodramatic implements of Venetian cookery dangling tragically
from the wall. Here is no every-day cheerfulness of cooking-range, but
grotesque andirons wading into the bristling embers, and a long crane with
villanous pots gibbeted upon it. When Giovanna's mother, then (of the
Italian hags, haggard), rises to do us reverence from the darkest corner
of this kitchen, and croaks her good wishes for our long life, continued
health, and endless happiness, it has the effect upon our spirits of the
darkest malediction.

Not more pleasing, though altogether lighter and cheerfuler, was
Giovanna's sister-in-law, whom we knew only as the Cognata. Making her
appearance first upon the occasion of Giovanna's sickness, she slowly but
surely established herself as an habitual presence, and threatened at one
time, as we fancied, to become our paid servant. But a happy calamity
which one night carried off a carpet and the window curtains of an
unoccupied room, cast an evil suspicion upon the Cognata, and she never
appeared after the discovery of the theft. We suspected her of having
invented some dishes of which we were very fond, and we hated her for
oppressing us with a sense of many surreptitious favors. Objectively, she
was a slim, hoopless little woman, with a tendency to be always at the
street-door when we opened it. She had a narrow, narrow face, with eyes of
terrible slyness, an applausive smile, and a demeanor of slavish
patronage. Our kitchen, after her addition to the household, became the
banqueting-hall of Giovanna's family, who dined there every day upon
dishes of fish and garlic, that gave the house the general savor of a low