better than in my formal Sunday clothes.  I made gestures, and leaped, as I had seen the dancers do at the fair-theatre.  In the midst of this I looked in the glass, and saw by chance the image of a niche which was behind me.  On its white ground hung three green cords, each of them twisted up in a way which from the distance I could not clearly discern.  I therefore turned round rather hastily, and asked the old man about the niche as well as the cords.  He very courteously took a cord down, and showed it to me.  It was a band of green silk of moderate thickness, the ends of which, joined by green leather with two holes in it, gave it the appearance of an instrument for no very desirable purpose.  The thing struck me as suspicious, and I asked the old man the meaning.  He answered me very quietly and kindly, “This is for those who abuse the confidence which is here readily shown them.”  He hung the cord again in its place, and immediately desired me to follow him; for this time he did not hold me, and so I walked freely beside him.

My chief curiosity now was, to discover where the gate and bridge, for passing through the railing and over the canal, might be; since as yet I had not been able to find any thing of the kind.  I therefore watched the golden fence very narrowly as we hastened towards it.  But in a moment my sight failed:  lances, spears, halberds, and partisans began unexpectedly to rattle and quiver; and the strange movement ended in all the points sinking towards each other just as if two ancient hosts, armed with pikes, were about to charge.  The confusion to the eyes, the clatter to the ears, was hardly to be borne; but infinitely surprising was the sight, when, falling perfectly level, they covered the circle of the canal, and formed the most glorious bridge that one can imagine.  For now a most variegated garden parterre met my sight.  It was laid out in curvilinear beds, which, looked at together, formed a labyrinth of ornaments; all with green borders of a low, woolly plant, which I had never seen before; all with flowers, each division of different colors, which, being likewise low and close to the ground, allowed the plan to be easily traced.  This delicious sight, which I enjoyed in the full sunshine, quite riveted my eyes.  But I hardly knew where I was to set my foot; for the serpentine paths were most delicately laid with blue sand, which seemed to form upon the earth a darker sky, or a sky seen in the water:  and so I walked for a while beside my conductor, with my eyes fixed upon the ground, until at last I perceived, that, in the middle of this round of beds and flowers, there was a great circle of cypresses or poplar-like trees, through which one could not see, because the lowest branches seemed to spring out of the ground.  My guide, without taking me exactly the shortest way, led me nevertheless immediately towards that centre; and how was I astonished, when, on entering the circle of high trees, I saw before me the peristyle of a