Note 231 — Chapter XIX · The Mendrisiotto

Butler always regretted that he did not find out about Medea Colleone’s passero solitario in time to introduce it into Alps and Sanctuaries. Medea was the daughter of Bartolomeo Colleone, the famous condottiere, whose statue adorns the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. Like Catullus’s Lesbia, whose immortal passer Butler felt sure was also a passero solitario, she had the misfortune to lose her pet. Its little body can still be seen in the Capella Colleone, up in the old town at Bergamo, lying on a little cushion on the top of a little column, and behind it there stands a little weeping willow tree whose leaves, cut out in green paper, droop over the corpse. In front of the column is the inscription,—“Passer Medeæ Colleonis,” and the whole is covered by a glass shade about eight inches high. Mr. Festing Jones has kindly allowed me to borrow this note from his “Diary of a Tour through North Italy to Sicily.”—R. A. S.