chateau. I must have passed through that closet before, for the view
was so familiar out of its window; just the particular bit of round
tower in front, the cypress on the other side of the ravine, the belfry
beyond, and the piece of the line of Monte Sant' Agata and the
Leonessa, covered with snow, against the sky. I suppose there must be
twin rooms, and that I had got into the wrong one; or rather, perhaps
some shutter had been opened or curtain withdrawn. As I was passing, my
eye was caught by a very beautiful old mirror-frame let into the brown
and yellow inlaid wall. I approached, and looking at the frame, looked
also, mechanically, into the glass. I gave a great start, and almost
shrieked, I do believe--(it's lucky the Munich professor is safe out of
Urbania!). Behind my own image stood another, a figure close to my
shoulder, a face close to mine; and that figure, that face, hers! Medea
da Carpi's! I turned sharp round, as white, I think, as the ghost I
expected to see. On the wall opposite the mirror, just a pace or two
behind where I had been standing, hung a portrait. And such a
portrait!--Bronzino never painted a grander one. Against a background
of harsh, dark blue, there stands out the figure of the Duchess (for it
is Medea, the real Medea, a thousand times more real, individual, and
powerful than in the other portraits), seated stiffly in a high-backed
chair, sustained, as it were, almost rigid, by the stiff brocade of
skirts and stomacher, stiffer for plaques of embroidered silver flowers
and rows of seed pearl. The dress is, with its mixture of silver and
pearl, of a strange dull red, a wicked poppy-juice color, against which
the flesh of the long, narrow hands with fringe-like fingers; of the
long slender neck, and the face with bared forehead, looks white and
hard, like alabaster. The face is the same as in the other portraits:
the same rounded forehead, with the short fleece-like, yellowish-red
curls; the same beautifully curved eyebrows, just barely marked; the
same eyelids, a little tight across the eyes; the same lips, a little