There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap jewellery, for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood; there are shops with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops for cheese and butter and milk--indeed from this one little street in Genoa you could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble life.
As you still go up, the street takes a slight bend; and immediately before you, you see it spanned by the lofty crumbled arch of St.
Andrew's Gate, with its two mighty towers one on each side.

Just as you see it you are at Columbus's house.

The number is thirty-seven; it is like any of the other houses, tall and narrow; and there is a slab built into the wall above the first storey, on which is written this inscription:-- NVLLA DOMVS TITVLO DIGNIOR HEIC PATERNIS IN AEDIBV CHRISTOPHORVS COLVMBVS PVERITIAM PRIMAMQVE IVVENTAM TRANSEGIT You stop and look at it; and presently you become conscious of a difference between it and all the other houses.

They are all alert, busy, noisy, crowded with life in every storey, oozing vitality from every window; but of all the narrow vertical strips that make up the houses of the street, this strip numbered thirty-seven is empty, silent, and dead.

The shutters veil its windows; within it is dark, empty of furniture, and inhabited only by a memory and a spirit.