ITALY AND PARIS 



237 



At Vicenza the door of the hotel stood wide open and when 

 we entered its halls were deserted. After waiting a while in 

 its spacious vacancy, an old servant doing his leisurely rounds, 

 surprised at the sight of visitors, disappeared somewhere into 

 the echoing distance, and later emerged with the sorrowful- 

 eyed master. His welcome of the guests was more like that of 

 a sad and impoverished host than of a money-making keeper 

 of a tavern. While waiting for the precarious getting together 

 of dinner, he offered to show the attractions of the town. Mr. 

 Shaler's sensitive appreciation of Palladio's work the glory 

 of Vicenza warmed the Italian's poor old heart and in the 

 waning sunlight he showed one after another of that architect's 

 beautiful palaces. After this he led the way to the outskirts of 

 the town, that a particular view might be had, which, for beauty, 

 sadness, and suggestiveness of fading glory, Mr. Shaler often 

 spoke of as one of the most impressive he remembered ever to 

 have seen. 



At Naples of course Vesuvius was the great attraction, and 

 almost at the risk of his life he looked down into the crater, 

 sending forth at the time lava, stones, and ashes. So intensely 

 interested was he in what was going on that it required all the 

 strength of his guide to drag him away at a critical moment 

 when the danger obvious to the guide was unsuspected by the 

 enthusiastic student. But his true volcanic spree was in the 

 classic Auvergne region of France, where, by driving, walking, 

 and almost climbing on his knees, like the devout pilgrims, to 

 the Puy du Dome and Puy de Parion, he studied the phenomena 

 of extinct volcanoes in all their details. 



In the late winter of 1867 Mr. Shaler returned to Paris. He 

 was never over smitten with the French Capital. Indeed he 

 liked Frenchmen none too well, and least of all their self- 

 constituted ruler Napoleon III, who at that time was at the 

 height of his meretricious glory. He revolted at the forced uni- 

 formity of the city that Baron Haussmann had brought about ; 

 such imposed regularity was perhaps admissible in an American 



