wholly unrelated to the dream of this story, a dream in which I was being shown portfolios of etchings and others of cheap reproductions of the same etchings; my mentor, talking Italian, saying of the reproductions:
"Non sono tavole, sono disvole."
In the dream these words meant: "These are not pictures, merely near-pictures." Now "tavola" in Italian is used of no kind of picture except an altar-piece, and "disvola" is not Italian at all, merely a dream-word. Which is just the way in which words behave in dreams, as Stevenson noted.
The six tales which follow the first in this collection are, I believe, veracious glimpses of the past, without any marring anachronisms. But The Skewbald Panther is a product rather of creative impulse than of ripe scholarship. It is, however, to my thinking, too good a story to be spoiled in an attempted rewriting. Accurate later knowledge does not lure me to alterations. The tale's plot pivots on my fantastic youthful misconceptions as to seating-regulations in the Colosseum; and these, while wholly baseless and infinitely improbable, are by no means impossible nor are they out of key with the period-atmosphere; which atmosphere, both social and conversational, is, I believe, veraciously conveyed.
