He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he
seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him
with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the
pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a _lira_ to the gate-keeper's
child. He went on, without removing his eye:

"For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the
Duchess."

"And no one lives here now?"

"No one, sir. The Duke, goes to Como for the summer season."

I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging
groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile.

"And that's Vicenza?"

"_Proprio_!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading
from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the
left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking
flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio."

"And does the Duke come there?"

"Never. In winter he goes to Rome."

"And the palace and the villa are always closed?"

"As you see--always."