eBooks Base 2000

We talked
with three or four, and found them asking prices of various enormity,
from a hundred and fifty scudi down to little more than ninety; but Mr.
Thompson says that they always begin in this way, and will probably come
down to somewhere about seventy-five. Mr. Thompson took me into the Via
Portoghese, and showed me an old palace, above which rose--not a very
customary feature of the architecture of Rome--a tall, battlemented
tower. At one angle of the tower we saw a shrine of the Virgin, with a
lamp, and all the appendages of those numerous shrines which we see at
the street-corners, and in hundreds of places about the city. Three or
four centuries ago, this palace was inhabited by a nobleman who had an
only son and a large pet monkey, and one day the monkey caught the infant
up and clambered to this lofty turret, and sat there with him in his arms
grinning and chattering like the Devil himself. The father was in
despair, but was afraid to pursue the monkey lest he should fling down
the child from the height of the tower and make his escape.


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