OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



laden with the germs of death. But the young Prindpessa 

 had absorbed a good deal of the indolent indifference of 

 her adopted country towards hygiene. 

 " YOU, with your English notions ! " was all the comfort 

 her visitor got, offered in tones of good-humour not un- 

 mixed with contempt. Or else : " What you smell, my 

 dear, is only carbolic / and that is very healthy/' 

 A few dabs of disinfectant had indeed been distributed 

 about the moat, on much "the same principle, and with the 

 same effect, as the red pepper which is served with wild 

 duck, just to heighten the flavour of the dish. 



Perhaps the most lasting impression of that Lombardy 

 sojourn was the morning discovery in a glass of drinking- 

 water which had been placed beside the bed the previous 

 night, of the most extraordinary creature any of us had 

 ever seen. It was like a very large shrimp, perfectly trans- 

 parent, with such gigantic antennae and legs that they 

 protruded over the top of the tumbler ! 

 No one else in the castle had ever beheld anything like it 

 either, it appeared / except one old woman, who described 

 it vaguely as " una bestia del acqua." But as it most 

 certainly had not been in the tumbler when the water was 

 put into it, its origin remains for ever a mystery. 

 A few nights later the little girl of the party of travellers 

 found one of these zoological mysteries in a quite empty 

 tumbler ! We might have thought it a practical joke played 

 on the forestieri, only that no one could have come into 

 the room without the knowledge of its occupants. 

 This, and the sudden departure of the " chef" who had 

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