As if it were a part
of his personality, on a table facing him, covered with maps and papers,
sits the mighty admiral's cat, which, with true feline im-passiveness,
ignores the spectator and gives its sole regard to the admiral. There
are possibly better portraits in the world than this, which was once by
Sebastiano del Piombo and is now by Titian; but I remember none which
has moved me more.
We tried in vain for a photograph of it, and then after a brief glance
at the riches of the Church of the Annunziata, where we were followed
around the interior by a sacristan who desired us to note that the
pillars were "All inlady, all inlady" with different marbles, and, after
a chilly moment in San Lorenzo, which the worshippers and the masons
were sharing between them in the prayers and repairs always going on in
cathedrals, we drove for luncheon to the hotel where we had sojourned in
great comfort three years before. Genoa has rather a bad name for its
hotels, but we had found this one charming, perhaps because when we had
objected to going five flights up the landlord had led us yet a floor
higher, that we might walk into the garden.
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