in the Vicentine and Veronese highlands. Nevertheless, when fortune favoured the Imperialists in 1509, Germany found many adherents at Verona. The people of the Lessini hastened to implore the confirmation of their old rights, and (oddly enough) their demand was made in Italian. Eight years afterwards Venice regained the Veronese State, and before long the mountaineers were obliged to nominate a "Protector of the Thirteen Communes" to look to their interests at St. Mark's. An influential patrician, usually a Senator, was always chosen for this office. During the eighteenth century a Donati and a Pisani held it in succession.

From the close of the seventeenth century the German element diminished in the mountains; much land had been appropriated by Veronese nobles; communes, monasteries, and private individuals, were perpetually disputing the possession of the pastures. To-day the Lessini grazing grounds are shared between local proprietors and the "Nobil Compagnia" of Verona, descendants of the old feudal lords.

There are no family seats in the democratic Lessini, no ruined castles. Save for Count Pulle's modern villa on Monte Tabor and an unfinished one behind, we must drive down to the outskirts of Verona to find a seigneurial house. At Scandole, however, on the brink of the Vajo dell'Anguilla, there stands a charming little cottage with a history. Now owned by a peasant-farmer of the old Scandola clan, it was built about a hundred years ago by the noble Ollibon of Val Pantena. This patrician led the life of a mediæval robber-Baron, oppressing tenants and vassals with feudal ferocity, terrorizing the whole countryside, and keeping a band of bravi (in local parlance, "buli") to enforce obedience to his behests. His power fell from him when Napoleon seized Venetia. Stripped of his lands, and trembling for his life, Ollibon fled to his shooting-lodge at Scandole, conveniently near the Austrian border, and trusted to bolts and bars to save him from the vengeance of the mountaineers. Perhaps he was still guarded by

"buli,” for he seems to have dragged out his life un

molested.

Chiesanuova, however, had witnessed at

least one of his crimes. Certain victims of his, flying there for safety, had been pursued by his men, and barbarously done to death.

Outwardly the Scandole house seems an ordinary cottage; but its walls are unusually solid, and its interior is daintily decorated with delicate stucco mouldings, faded frescoes, and elaborate roof beams. An altar on the landing, where mass was served, proves that Ollibon was of the privileged class, and it may have been used to soothe his remorse. The front door opens on a sunny little garden overhanging the steep of a wooded glen plunging into the Vajo dell'Anguilla. One looks down into the ravine and across to the townlet of Erbezzo on the height beyond. Midway along the sheer cliffs of this ravine, and overhung by bluffs of orange limestone, stretches a line of caves, regular as though shaped by human hands. With its southern outlook and landscape, this hermitage should be a cheerful abode. Three generations inhabit it now, and sturdy children are

romping among the flowers, while the friendly grandmother makes us welcome, and her deaf-and-dumb husband plucks the ripest cherries in our honour. The tyrant who ended his days here evidently sought safety as well as seclusion. We noticed that the back door on the mountain-side only led into a hayloft, walled off from the rest of the building.

The carriage-road finishes at Scandole, a hamlet of a few thatched cottages, with a Revenue station to guard the pass from Tirol. A side glen winds up to Cimberlini, another small village in the folds of the hills.

A charming walk along the edge of the Vajo leads through firs, beechwoods, and pastures to tiny Val di Lera, where the only torrent of the Lessini speeds to the Vajo between banks of blue gentian. This is an enchanting nook, commanding a peep of really wild scenery, and the streamlet has a boastful voice for its size. "Parmi les aveugles le borgne est roi." Scandole owns a bigger spring; but this, being

captured in a trough when it first gushes from a cave

beneath the Ollibon house, has no chance of frisking noisily over the rocks.

The drive back to Chiesanuova is loveliest towards evening. Then, one enjoys the sunset over Lake Garda through the folds of the hills. This great sheet of water seems to have a climate of its own, a climate which, besides brewing the biggest storms, provides the grandest pageants and effects: gold, crimson, and lemon-green skies, with cloud processions even finer and more fantastic than those noted by Mr. Ruskin. Once, above the red horizon, soared groups of cumuli in the likeness of solid mountains, rent here and there by jagged defiles piercing to azure space, and all half-veiled by bars of silvery film. At this magical moment every tree, every blade of grass, seemed carved in gleaming metal; no leaf stirred; nature held her breath. Then the pageant vanished: even the afterglow faded, and we beheld to the east a sky of equal, coolest blue with the hardness and purity of polished stone.

About ten miles from Chiesanuova are the caves