ground-floor, where I have a dressing-room, a large vaulted saloon, hung
with yellow damask, and a square writing-study, the walls and ceilings of
the two latter apartments being ornamented with angels and cherubs aloft
in fresco, and with temples, statues, vases, broken columns, peacocks,
parrots, vines, and sunflowers below. I know not how many more saloons,
anterooms, and sleeping-chambers there are on this same basement story,
besides an equal number over them, and a great subterranean
establishment. I saw some immense jars there, which I suppose were
intended to hold oil; and iron kettles, for what purpose I cannot tell.
There is also a chapel in the house, but it is locked up, and we cannot
yet with certainty find the door of it, nor even, in this great
wilderness of a house, decide absolutely what space the holy precincts
occupy. Adjoining U----'s chamber, which is in the tower, there is a
little oratory, hung round with sacred prints of very ancient date, and
with crucifixes, holy-water vases, and other consecrated things; and
here, within a glass case, there is the representation of an undraped
little boy in wax, very prettily modelled, and holding up a heart that
looks like a bit of red sealing-wax. If I had found him anywhere else I
should have taken him for Cupid; but, being in an oratory, I presume him
to have some religious signification. In the servants' room a crucifix
hung on one side of the bed, and a little vase for holy water, now
overgrown with a cobweb, on the other; and, no doubt, all the other
sleeping-apartments would have been equally well provided, only that
their occupants were to be heretics.

The lower floor of the house is tolerably furnished, and looks cheerful
with its frescos, although the bare pavements in every room give an
impression of discomfort. But carpets are universally taken up in Italy
during summer-time. It must have been an immense family that could have
ever filled such a house with life. We go on voyages of discovery, and