answer that those were the usual tales due to the mythopoeic (old
idiot!) tendency of the Renaissance; that research would disprove the
greater part of them, as it had disproved the stories current about the
Borgias, &c.; that, moreover, such a woman as I made out was
psychologically and physiologically impossible. Would that one could
say as much of such professors as he and his fellows!

Nov. 24th.--

I cannot get over my pleasure in being rid of that imbecile; I felt as
if I could have throttled him every time he spoke of the Lady of my
thoughts--for such she has become--_Metea_, as the animal called
her!

Nov. 30th.--

I feel quite shaken at what has just happened; I am beginning to fear
that that old pedant was right in saying that it was bad for me to live
all alone in a strange country, that it would make me morbid. It is
ridiculous that I should be put into such a state of excitement merely
by the chance discovery of a portrait of a woman dead these three
hundred years. With the case of my uncle Ladislas, and other suspicions
of insanity in my family, I ought really to guard against such foolish
excitement.

Yet the incident was really dramatic, uncanny. I could have sworn that
I knew every picture in the palace here; and particularly every picture
of Her. Anyhow, this morning, as I was leaving the Archives, I passed
through one of the many small rooms--irregular-shaped closets--which
fill up the ins and outs of this curious palace, turreted like a French