The day that we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent most of the time in viewing the churches.  These, even after the churches of Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and they in no instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves.  Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and the Lombardic of Verona.  The superb domes of St. Anthony’s emulate those of St. Mark’s; and the porticos of other Paduan churches rest upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate with their mystery and beauty.

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in the Chapter which drew us first to St. Anthony’s, and we saw them with the satisfaction naturally attending the contemplation of frescos discovered only since 1858, after having been hidden under plaster and whitewash for many centuries; but we could not believe that Giotto’s fame was destined to gain much by their rescue from oblivion.  They are in nowise to be compared with this master’s frescos in the Chapel of the Annunziata,—­which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and delight.  You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages.  Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the walls, and you sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos.  The gardener leaves you alone to the solitude and the silence, in which the talk of the painter and the exile is plain enough.  Their contemporaries and yours are cordial in their gay companionship:  through the half-open door falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sunshine that they saw lie there; the deathless birds that they heard sing out in the garden trees; it is the fresh sweetness of the grass mown so many hundred years ago that breathes through all the lovely garden grounds.

But in the midst of this pleasant communion with the past, you have a lurking pain; for you have hired your brougham by the hour; and you presently quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account.

We had chosen our driver from among many other drivers of broughams in the vicinity of Pedrocchi’s, because he had such an honest look, and was not likely, we thought, to deal unfairly with us.

“But first,” said the signor who had selected him, “how much is your brougham an hour?”

So and so.

“Show me the tariff of fares.”

“There is no tariff.”

“There is.  Show it to me.”

“It is lost, signor.”

“I think not.  It is here in this pocket.  Get it out.”

The tariff appears, and with it the fact that he had demanded just what the boatman of the ballad received in gift,—­thrice his fee.