Irma in Italy: A Travel Story

"Families do get so bored by one another travelling," said Richard. "That's one reason I hoped we might take this trip together. Any one who grows particularly tired of any one else has only to ask to exchange to the other carriage. Ellen and I usually get on very well together, but Katie——"

"Hush, Richard," and Ellen laid a warning finger on her brother's lips.

The road over which they travelled was hard and smooth, and although houses were few, there was much of interest on every side. Richard invented many tales by the way, about noble Florentines riding this road, only to be waylaid and killed by Sienese rivals. In his stories the Sienese were always as successful as they were in the paintings on the walls of the public buildings in Siena. Once they stopped to look back, and the coachman chose the most favorable point for a last view of the city wall, with one of the old gates.

Richard and Ellen both understood Italian, and spoke it fairly well.

"I have just been complimenting the cocchiere on his accent," said Richard, "and he took it quite as a matter of course. He says that every one knows that only in Siena can one hear the true Italian, and that the strangers who wish to speak Tuscan properly come to Siena to study."

"I thought that it was Florence where one must go," said Ellen.

"Hush, hush," whispered Richard; "if our coachman should understand you, I should fear for our lives. The very horses might run away and dash us into a ditch. Florence and Siena forsooth!"

The coachman himself did his part in entertaining them. He pointed out the entrance to one estate, and told a story or two about its owner, whose house was set far back and hidden from the road by extensive woods.

"Where do the working people live who cultivate these great farms?" asked Ellen, and the man answered by pointing to a large house in the distance. "Sometimes twenty or thirty people live in one of the houses of the contadino, or farmer. Their real home is in some town, but they stay with the farmer while he needs them."

Even with the best of company a long ride on a warm afternoon becomes tiresome. After a time Irma found herself counting the milestones, or kilometre stones, and she saw that instead of being perfectly plain blocks, most of them had some little carved ornament. On one hill they saw a wall that enclosed an old town, and the coachman could hardly find words to express the rapidity with which the population was diminishing.

"Why in the world should any one wish to live on the top of a hill?" asked Uncle Jim. "It was all very well when war was their occupation, but in these piping days of peace it would be too much like work to have to mount that hill daily for the protection of that old castle wall."

After a while the party came to a place where they could draw up by the side of the road and examine their lunch baskets.

"The first hotel luncheon I ever saw," exclaimed Uncle Jim, "without chicken legs and butterless rolls."

"You never before had me to order for you," said Richard. "I know their tricks and their manners, and so I did a little shopping on my own account. At this time of day I knew we would need nothing very substantial, and now you may praise the Sienese fruit and pastry to your heart's content, for that luncheon came chiefly from the little shops, and not from the landlady's larder."

"We can show appreciation without mere words." And soon the luncheon was finished to the last crumb, with due appreciation.

The air was cooler, and shortly they were passing through a factory town at the foot of a hill. As working hours were just over, people were sitting at their open doors, or going in and out of the little shops, much as they would in a New England village. Indeed, Uncle Jim said it made him think of a certain New Hampshire town that he knew well, until, as the horses clattered up the hilly street, suddenly at one side were the high substantial walls of a mediæval town.

Through an open gate they could see the old, narrow streets and high houses. In the beginning there had been but a castle here, around which the town had grown. Now, in modern times, it had spread all over the hill, or perhaps had spread up from the little mill that had had its first humble beginning on the stream below.

"I seem to be looking at history as it is made," said Irma.

"That's a fine way of putting it," cried Richard.

"Irma sees things exactly as they are," added Uncle Jim.

Soon they had descended the other side of the high hill they had so lately mounted. Ahead of them, and still a good distance away, was another hill with a coronet of slender towers.

"San Gimignano!" exclaimed Richard.

"I have never seen it before, but I know it from the pictures. Isn't it picturesque? I wanted to surprise you, Ellen, so I have said hardly anything to you about it. But you all know," and he included Uncle Jim and Irma in his remarks, "that you are soon to be inside of the one town in Italy that has kept its old mediæval towers. If the whole town is as quaint as the towers, you will thank me for bringing you here."

"We thank you now," said Uncle Jim.

"Why is the carriage ahead waiting for us?" asked Ellen.

"Katie thought you might like to come in here for the rest of the journey."

"Probably Katie herself wishes to change," whispered Richard.

Whereupon Ellen jumped lightly from the carriage, and a moment later she and Katie had exchanged places.

San Gimignano lost none of its picturesqueness as they drew near it, passing olive orchards and vineyards as they went up the hill.

"What a beautiful country!" cried Irma. "The people up there must be very happy if it is all as pretty."

It was now growing dusk, and the horses took the last turn very quickly. Irma noticed that Katie was quiet. Could it be that she and Marion had had some disagreement? The driver hurried on through an arched gateway.

"Oh, a narrow, city street," cried Irma, in a tone of disappointment.

"No matter," responded Richard, as their horse clattered along. "We'll get some fun out of it to-morrow. Now, in the dusk, I'll admit it does look rather like a tenement district."

After their long, warm drive, it wasn't a pleasing prospect to find their hotel on this narrow street instead of in a pleasant garden, as Katie said she had pictured it.

"At least it is different from any other hotel we have seen," said Ellen, philosophically, "and we hoped San Gimignano would be rather queer."

"But not this kind of queerness," Katie continued to protest.

CHAPTER XV

"Though I have sent you messages and post cards, this is my first letter. I know you do not care to hear much about pictures and churches, of which I have seen almost too many, so I will tell you about other things. I can't say much about foreign children, only that they all seem shy, except the little girls who beg, and the little boys who wish to be our guides, and I am sorry to say that sometimes, just to get rid of them, we give them the penny that we know is not good for them. They want all the money they can get from forestieri, for we are forestieri here.

"The Italian children seem to have long school hours, and that is one reason we do not see many of them about. When we do see a group together it troubles Aunt Caroline that they are not playing, but simply standing about solemnly. Sometimes, when we pass a station in the middle of the day, we see a little boy with a loaf of bread under his arm, cutting off a slice with a jack-knife. That probably is all he has for breakfast, and perhaps his dinner will be nothing but a dish of macaroni.

"Well, all we have ourselves for breakfast is chocolate and some rolls and butter. Older people take coffee. If we ask for a boiled egg we can have it, but we are trying to live as the Italians do. After breakfast we go sightseeing, and we are always half starved by one o'clock, when we have déjeuner. Everything then is served in courses, and if you are late you simply have to go without the things that were served before you sat down. In the middle of the day we rest, for it is as hot as our hottest summer from twelve to three. After that we drive, or visit some church or museum, ending with afternoon tea. If you happen to have friends at some hotel, it is fun to drop in there. But over all the pastry shops, that are almost like restaurants, you see the sign 'afternoon tea.' It is the one English expression most Italians seem to know.

"Dinner is served in courses like déjeuner. But whatever else they give us, we are sure of one thing, a course of chicken and salad. By the time the chicken comes to me, it is generally all wings, which I never eat. None of us ever eat salad, because we are suspicious of the water it is washed in.

"You have not had many railroad journeys, and so the little cars and engines might not seem as funny to you as they do to us. Each car is divided into little compartments, with room for five persons on each side, and there you have to sit and stare at the persons opposite. But we have generally been fortunate enough to have a carriage to ourselves.

"When we arrive at a station, we always find a row of men in blue cotton blouses and conductors' caps lined up waiting to carry our bags. They are the facchini, or porters, and each one tries to carry several bags, for it is the law that he shall be paid ten centimes, or two cents, for each piece of luggage he carries.

"We got rid of crowded railway carriages and facchini, when we went from Siena to Florence. For we drove all the way, staying one day at San Gimignano, the most curious place we have seen. We wouldn't have thought of going there but for Richard Sanford, whose family we met in Siena. Just think! His cousin, Katie Grimston, is travelling with him and his mother. Katie Grimston, who says that Nap still belongs to her; and I am afraid she really will take him away from us. But to return to San Gimignano. It is on the top of a high hill, and has a wall going completely around it, with handsome great arches, or gates.

"There are eight tall towers in the town, and five on the walls. But none of them are considered safe now for visitors to climb, though we had all we could do to keep Marion and Richard from trying one or two of them. The people of San Gimignano were divided into two great parties, Guelph for the pope and Ghibelline for the emperor. From the towers, belonging to the leading families in the town, they could do any amount of harm to their enemies in the streets below, and also keep a lookout for outside enemies on their way from Siena.

"Next to the towers (which, to be honest, look a great deal like factory chimneys of gray stone) you would like the pictures in the cathedral that tell all the old Bible stories, especially the one where they are building the Ark, with Noah and his family and all the animals standing about and looking on.

"In another church some beautiful frescoes by Gozzoli tell the story of St. Augustine's life. One, where he is shown going to school with his books under his arm, is very entertaining.

"All the young people seem to have left San Gimignano. There are none but middle-aged and old, and I never in one place saw so many bent old men and women. The town itself is so gray and old and poor that we were glad to leave it. We had enjoyed our drive from Siena so much that Aunt Caroline and Mrs. Sanford thought we might as well drive to Florence. This was forty miles, and we all got rather tired. But the country was beautiful, and after our sixty miles of it by carriage, we feel that we know just what Tuscany is. The farmers use great white oxen for their work, white and large and smooth skinned. They made more impression on us than anything else we saw.

"Now we feel quite at home in Florence. My room looks out on the Arno, the river that runs through the centre of the city. Not far away I see the famous Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge. Give my love to every one, especially Mahala and Nap.

"Your affectionate sister,

"Irma."

Hardly had Irma signed her letter, when Ellen Sanford came into the room.

"The door was half open, and you did not hear my knock. But what a long letter. My family never gets anything but post cards from me when I am travelling."

"Well, this is to my little sister. I promised her one long letter."

"I am glad it's finished, for now you can go out with me. Katie went off in great spirits, because she had managed to get Marion and Richard both to go shopping with her; the boys hate shops, too. Your uncle and aunt have taken mother driving, and so what shall we do?"

"Let us go to the Medici Chapel. I am tired of galleries. I shall need a week to digest what I saw yesterday at the Uffizi."

"What suits you will suit me," said Ellen, and soon the girls were driving toward San Lorenzo.

"These booths remind me of the Rag Fair at Rome," said Irma, glancing at the display of trinkets and small household articles on canvas-shaded tables, in an open space near the church. "Only these things are much cheaper. But what a crowd. Italians seem to like open-air shopping."

Within the lofty church the girls saw much to admire, especially the sculptures by Thorwaldsen, Donatello, and Verocchio. But the tomb of Cosimo de Medici, "the father of his country," was a plain porphyry slab.

"The great monument must be somewhere else." And Irma followed Ellen to the old sacristy, where, though they saw other Medici tombs, they knew these were not what they sought. In the new sacristy were Michelangelo's famous statues of Lorenzo, with the figures of Dawn and Twilight at the base, and of Guiliano, with Day and Night. But beautiful as these were, they knew they must search further.

At last some one directed them to a door outside, at the other end of the church, and then with tickets they entered the mausoleum.

"Ah," said Irma, "it is really all I expected. Some one told me it was not in good taste, and it is not really completed. But a building like this is more impressive than if decorated with paintings. The pavement is beautiful, and the walls of exquisite marbles seem built to last forever."

"There are not many statues," said Ellen.

"No, but I dare say they meant to have more. It is because the grandeur of the Medicis didn't last that this interests me, Ellen. In the Palazzo Vecchio and the Riccardi Palace we have seen them painted as conquering heroes, and every one of them holds his head as if he owned the world."

"They did own a good bit of their little world in their own day."

"That is just what I mean. We have the paintings and the statues, and we know all that Cosimo the first and Lorenzo the Magnificent did for Florence by encouraging art and establishing museums and libraries. But the later men who were not so great built this chapel, and when I look on these magnificent tombs, and remember what harm came to Savonarola through a de Medici, and what harm Catherine de Medici did——"

"Oh, Irma, I believe they did more good than harm in the world, and this tomb is a splendid memorial."

"Yes, it is; only the effect it has on me is different from its effect on you."

"Now for the library," said Irma, as they turned away from the tomb, "and after that I will try to show you something quite different."

"This isn't at all like a library," exclaimed Ellen, as they stood in the high-roofed hall of the Laurentian Library. "There are no bookcases, and why are these pews here?"

Before Irma could reply, an attendant explained that Irma's pews were stands for the valuable manuscripts, and he added that Michelangelo had designed them as well as the fine wooden ceiling of the great room. He permitted the girls to look at the manuscripts in substantial covers chained to the stands. Many of them were Greek and Latin classics of great age. Others were in Italian, and exquisitely illuminated, like the Canzone of Petrarch, with portraits of Petrarch and Laura. Ellen bought large copies of these portraits, with the delicate coloring exquisitely reproduced, and Irma sighed, as she realized how seldom she herself could spend money on things she liked.

"Ask him the way to the cloisters," she whispered, as they bade the librarian good-by; and Ellen, when she had interpreted his reply, asked, "But why should we go to the cloisters?"

"Oh, you will see," and Irma looked at her watch. "We are in good time. It is only quarter of twelve."

"In good time for what?" persisted Ellen, as they entered the cloistered enclosure at one side of San Lorenzo, and walked along the arcades to read the many memorial tablets on wall and pavement.

"I will tell you," said Irma. "This is a kind of Animal Rescue League, a refuge for stray cats. Persons anxious to get rid of their cats bring them here, and those who wish to adopt cats come here for them. They say that the stray cats of Florence hide here in corners and on roofs."

"Well, if I needed a cat I shouldn't know how to find it here. There certainly isn't one in sight."

"Well, that's why twelve o'clock is the important hour. Exactly on the stroke of twelve the cats are fed with meat. They seem to know the time, and come rushing down from roofs and chimneys, and after they are fed people choose the cats they want."

"Hark! Isn't twelve striking now?" asked Ellen, as the bells of many churches began to peal loudly. "It is certainly striking twelve; but I see no cats."

"I don't understand it," said Irma. "I read a long account the other day, in a book that described Florence."

"Here is the custodian; I will ask him."

After talking for several minutes with the custodian, Ellen turned with a smile to Irma. "This is the place where the cats used to be fed, and it was a very ancient custom to let stray cats have refuge here. But many of them refused to be adopted and became so wild that now they are all given over to a society, I suppose like the prevention of cruelty. Your book was not up to date, though it is not very long since the feeding of the cats was given up."

"Well, I am glad that we have seen the place where they used to feed them. I can at least describe it to Tessie. I am always trying to see things that will entertain her when I go home."

At déjeuner Katie was in great spirits; she had bought a number of pretty things, and had kept the two boys with her all the morning, on the pretext that she was in great need of their advice. Among her purchases a long double necklace of large amber beads was especially beautiful, and Irma praised it generously.

"I would rather have them than anything I have seen in Florence; any piece of jewelry," she added quickly.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Caroline exchanged significant glances.

After déjeuner Richard and Ellen invited Irma to go with them to San Marco.

"Mother and Katie say they wish simply to drive, and Marion, I believe, is going with them to San Miniato, and your aunt thinks you might not care for the Accademia to-day," said Ellen, as she gave Irma her own invitation. "But Richard is sure you would enjoy San Marco and Savonarola."

So in the early afternoon the three friends found themselves wandering in the beautiful cloisters of the old monastery, with its little flower garden in the centre, and its great pine, whose trunk was wreathed with ivy. They walked around a second cloistered garden whose rosebeds were fenced in by a row of pointed bricks. Seated on a bench, they looked up at the tiny windows of the second story, and wondered if the garden that Savonarola had looked on was much like this.

"We must not sit here long," and, as he spoke, Richard walked over to one of the frescoes painted on the brick walls under the arches. He called Irma's attention to those by Fra Angelico, representing scenes in the life of Christ.

"The monastery," he explained, "was suppressed forty years ago, and the whole building is now a museum. There are some beautiful paintings in the chapter house and the refectory, but I am most anxious to see the cells upstairs, nearly all of which are decorated with paintings by Fra Angelico and his pupils."

"Richard," said Ellen, "I see that this is to be one of the occasions when you are going to appear terribly wise and talk like a book. Sometimes, when you are particularly pleased with things in general, you are so frivolous that I feel that I ought to explain you to some one, but to-day I believe that you are going to the opposite extreme."

"No matter," interposed Irma. "You know all about San Marco, but I am less wise."

"Well spoken, young lady," said Richard, in the tone which Irma already had learned to associate with his fun-making mood. "But I cannot pretend to have any knowledge about San Marco, or Savonarola or Fra Angelico that you and my sister might not already possess, if you have read your books carefully. First, as to Savonarola; he became Prior of San Marco in 1490, and when he preached in the church here, the whole piazza in front was crowded hours before the doors opened, and shopkeepers did not think it worth while to open their shops until the great preacher's sermon was over. He made religion seem a simple thing, within the reach of all who tried to live pure lives. He addressed himself to the poor and to the young; and he especially blamed the love of luxury that was spreading in Florence, though he encouraged artists to use their talents on religious pictures."

"Well, we all know that," said Ellen, mildly.

"Then you remember how on the last day of Carnival, 1497, his followers went from house to house collecting books and pictures and musical instruments and other things that they thought had an evil influence, and burned them all in a great fire in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I will point out the place later."

"I should like to see it," responded Irma, to whom Richard had turned.

"Savonarola had made many enemies by his plain speaking, and though for a time Florence seemed to have had a change of heart, when the Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him, the supporters of the de Medici power went against him, and at last San Marco was stormed, and Savonarola was carried away to death."

"Yes—yes—it is a very sad story. It is pleasanter to go into these cells and remember how Savonarola encouraged art. Let us look at these frescoes carefully," and the three walked on slowly, stopping a moment at the entrance to each cell, where, on the whitewashed walls, were exquisite paintings by Fra Angelico, his brother Fra Benedetto, and Fra Bartolommeo. At last, after a turn or two at the end of the corridor, they came to the Prior's Cell, with Fra Bartolommeo's frescoes on the wall.

"Of course you recognize Savonarola," said Richard, "and that other is his friend Benievieni, and look at these smaller cells inside; here is his hair shirt and his rosary and this bit of old wood, as the inscription says, is from the pile on which he was burnt."

"Ugh!" cried Irma, "I don't like it"; and she turned to look at Savonarola's sermons and his crucifix.

The three were silent as they left the dormitories of the good brothers of San Marco, especially when they remembered the great prior, whose terrible death the fickle Florentines in time repented.

"Time is so precious to-day," said Richard, as they left San Marco.

"And why, pray?" asked Ellen.

"Because you have me with you, dear sister. You cannot be sure when I shall be ready to go with you again."

"Indeed!" responded Ellen. "We are not sure that we shall need you again."

"Well, then, since time is precious, we will drive for a moment to S. Annunziata to see something fine and something funny."

Soon they were in the little courtyard of the church, and after leaving them for a moment Richard returned with a sacristan, carrying keys. He unlocked the doors of the corridor surrounding the court, in which were some fine frescoes by Andrea del Sarto and two or three other great painters. After they had admired these paintings, while their guide moved off toward some other visitors, Richard said, "Here is the 'something funny,'" and he pointed to a number of small, crude paintings at the end of the corridor.

"They are funny; what in the world are they?" asked Irma.

"You mustn't laugh, even though they seem funny. Come here, and I will explain," and Richard pointed to one that showed a man falling headlong down a steep flight of stairs. "This man, you see, escaped death from a broken neck, on the date put above the picture, and this one, on the deck of the ship tossing about so wildly on the ocean, was saved from shipwreck, and this other in the carriage with two wildly prancing horses was evidently not fatally injured, and this woman in bed, surrounded by her weeping family, was apparently at the point of death, when her patron saint saved her."

"Oh," exclaimed Ellen. "Then these are pious offerings, and I won't laugh at them. It is rather a pretty idea to show thankfulness in this way, and we oughtn't to laugh, even if they could not have Del Sartos or Botticellis for their artists."

On their way home, they looked at the spot in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, now marked by a stone, where Savonarola was burned, and his two chief followers, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro.

"When I leave Florence," said Irma, "I shall remember the Palazzo Vecchio more because it was the prison of Savonarola than for anything else."

"But you haven't forgotten the wonderful great halls, and the gildings and paintings. There are no halls more splendid in Florence."

"No, I haven't forgotten them, and I remember Uncle Jim told us the Hall of the Five Hundred was built from the plans of Savonarola for his great Council, and Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. But the return of the de Medici changed all this, and instead, every inch of space records the greatness of the de Medici and their victories over the enemies of Florence. But the great statue of Savonarola is there, and I believe his memory will last the longest."

"You are right," responded Richard absentmindedly. He had just seen a flower girl with a basket of exquisite roses.

"Oh, Richard, you are extravagant," cried Ellen, as the girl emptied her basket.

"One can't be extravagant with flowers in Florence," he replied.

Katie and Marion were standing at the door when they reached the hotel.

"Where did you get those roses?" Katie asked, as they descended from the carriage with their arms full.

"Gathered them, of course," replied Richard promptly, although the question had not been addressed to him.

"Richard gathered them for us," added Ellen. "He is a brother worth having."

"Marion and I didn't see any like them," said Katie.

CHAPTER XVI

"How foolish!" protested Aunt Caroline. "Irma has no such ideas. Marion has never exerted himself for Irma, and she has always been too busy to think of him."

"When it's quite dark," continued Uncle Jim, "we must walk over to the Piazza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. They say the illumination of the tower is the thing best worth seeing, better even than the fireworks these crowds are waiting for."

A little later the three stood in front of the tall gray tower of the old palace, whose outlines were wonderfully beautiful, set in a frame of fire made up of countless tiny lamps.

"Hello," cried a voice, "we didn't expect to see you here." Richard was the speaker, and with him were Marion and Ellen.

"Where is Katie?" asked Aunt Caroline.

"Oh, she and Marion have had some kind of a spat, and she insisted on our leaving her at the hotel."

"Spat! Nonsense!" interposed Ellen.

"Well, a quarrel by any other name will do just as well. I'm glad she can stay with mother. One of us ought to be with her."

Marion made no reply to Richard. But he walked beside Ellen on their way back to the hotel, while Richard helped Irma find a way through the throng.

"What a quiet, orderly crowd!" cried Aunt Caroline, "and to-day their Fourth of July!"

"It's only after they have crossed the Atlantic that foreigners grow uproarious. There seems to be more law and order over here."

The Lungarno was packed with people when they reached the hotel, so all went upstairs to Aunt Caroline's room, that overlooked the river and the boat from which the fireworks were sent off. There were one or two set pieces, the chorus on the large float sang several part songs, and at intervals showers of stars of all colors fell from the Roman candles and rockets sent up from the boats.

It was late when they began to separate. "Where is Marion?" asked Aunt Caroline, when the lights were turned on, and the others came to bid her good night.

"He must have gone to his room," said Uncle Jim. "I noticed half an hour ago that he was not here."

"Perhaps he didn't like the noise," said Richard, with what sounded like a slight shade of sarcasm. "His nerves are not very strong."

The next morning, when Irma went to breakfast, none of the older members of her party were at the table, and Marion, too, was missing.

"Of course Marion didn't give it to me," she heard Katie say, as she took her seat.

"It's certainly very strange that it should be the same device as his small seal."

"Probably they wouldn't look at all alike, if you should bring them together and compare them."

"Can mine eyes deceive me?" Richard assumed a tragic tone.

"It's the ring that Katie has around her scarf." Ellen explained to Irma. "Richard is sure that Marion gave it to her. But he ought to believe Katie when she says this is not so."

Irma looked closely at the ring through which Katie had pulled the end of her silk necktie. The dragon carved on the agate stone certainly seemed familiar. Yes, she recalled the same dragon on an old-fashioned seal that Marion had shown her one day; at least it looked the same, though of course the dragon was by no means an uncommon device. But after all, this was no affair of hers. If Katie said Marion had not given the ring to her there seemed to be no reason for Richard to doubt Katie's word. Suppose even that he had loaned it to her, why should her cousin concern himself about it?

After breakfast Katie and Ellen drove to their dressmaker's, and just as Irma had finished a home letter Marion appeared in the reading-room.

"I had an early breakfast," he explained, "and have been out walking. Now I wish some one would take a trolley ride with me. Will you go?"

At first Irma could hardly believe the invitation was meant for her; she had been so little with Marion the past fortnight.

But when she saw that he undoubtedly meant her, she accepted gladly.

"It does not matter where we go," he cried, as the car started. "I simply wish to see what the suburbs are like out this way."

Soon they had passed beyond the old narrow streets, and were running through a broad avenue of the newer Florence that has begun to drive the old city out of sight.

After a word or two to the conductor, "Why, this is a car for Fiesole," said Marion. "I had meant to drive out there some day, but now——"

He did not finish the sentence, but later in the morning Irma realized what he had had in mind when he spoke.

"Fiesole," Marion began to explain, "the old Faesulae, was an important place long before Florence. I believe there are imposing Etruscan fortifications still to be seen up there on the hill. But Fiesole was conquered and destroyed in the early part of the twelfth century, and Florence soon became rich. Many English and Americans have country villas at Fiesole. It is not so damp there as in Florence. There are several people I know living out there, if I cared to see them."

"Oh, we don't come to Europe to see Americans," said Irma, noticing a severe expression on Marion's face, such as she had seen before, when Americans were spoken of.

After leaving the car they rambled around the pleasant, shady roads of Fiesole for an hour or more, visiting the piazza and the old church. At the terminus they had to wait a little time for the car by which they were to return. While standing near a little shop where they had made some purchases, a tall girl rushed up to Marion, and, seizing his hand, first raised it to her lips, and then poured out a flood of words.

Marion reddened, pulled his hand away, and looked puzzled, as the girl began to talk. But before she had finished her long, long sentence, his face cleared, and he turned toward Irma.

"She was on the Ariadne; her mother died. Perhaps you remember."

Of course Irma remembered. This was the girl upon whom she had so often looked from the deck above the steerage, the girl for whose family Marion had raised the subscription.

When the girl's words at last came to an end, Marion tore a leaf from his notebook and gave it to her, after he had written something upon it.

"Grazie, grazie," she cried, and then, when he shook his head to some request of hers, "A rivederci, signor and signorina," she cried, as they stepped toward the approaching car on which they were to return to the city.

"Now, I will explain," said Marion, as they rode toward Florence. "Luisa hopes some time to return to America, and I have given her my mother's address, in case she should need advice from us." ("The second time," Irma thought, "I have heard Marion speak of his mother.")

"She was greatly disappointed," continued Marion, "that we could not go up to see the family. They have a little house back there on the hills, and with the subscription raised on the ship they could lease it for five years, and they have a little besides to keep them going until their garden is grown. The grandmother hopes to sell enough flowers and vegetables in Florence to pay for clothes and things they can't raise on the farm. It's surprising, though, how little it takes for people to live on over here. Luisa says she earns something by working for a cousin who has one of those little shops at the terminus, two days in the week."

While Marion talked, Irma longed to ask why he had been unwilling to add her little gift to the money he had raised for Luisa's family on the Ariadne. But, in spite of his being so friendly now, she did not quite dare question him. Later in the day, however, when alone with Aunt Caroline, she told her about Luisa, and brought up the matter of the subscription.

"Oh," said Aunt Caroline, "I can partly explain that subscription to you. Marion told me little at the time, but since then we have had a talk. Indeed he is much more inclined to confide in me than when we first left New York. He says that he spent more or less time among the steerage passengers coming over, and when he found money did not come in readily for Luisa's family, he decided to make up the whole amount himself.

"He seldom changes his mind, when once he has decided upon a certain thing, and so when you offered your money he did not think it right to take it. You know Marion has a great deal of money of his own, and he could afford to do all that was necessary for this poor Italian family. I am sorry, however, that he hurt your feelings, for really Marion is goodhearted. Of course he has had a particularly hard time this year, and has not yet got over the effects of all he has been through."

"Now," thought Irma, "I will ask Aunt Caroline to tell me all about Marion. Every one else seems to know, and I hate mysteries." But before she had a chance to ask the question, Marion and Uncle Jim appeared on the scene, and the opportunity was lost.

After this the days at Florence passed swiftly. Aunt Caroline was absorbed in the galleries, and Uncle Jim or Mrs. Sanford spent much time there with her. The young people did their sightseeing by themselves, Richard, Ellen, Irma, and Marion, at least. Katie seemed, as Richard put it, "disaffected." She said she had been in Europe too long to care to spend much time over galleries and historical places.

"Shopping is much more necessary now, as I am to sail so soon, and grandmamma is willing to pay duty on any amount of things."

So, while Katie bought embroidered dresses, and spent hours over fittings, the others made what Ellen called "pilgrimages." Once it was to the old palace that had been Michelangelo's home, lately presented to Florence by a descendant of his brother. There they saw furniture and smaller belongings of the great man, manuscripts and sketches and plans of some of his great works, and on the walls of one room a series of paintings representing dramatic incidents in his life.

"And yet he died almost a century before Plymouth was settled," said Irma, returning to the historical comparisons of the first part of her trip.

Again, one day, rambling through a narrow street, they came to the so-called "house of Dante," a tiny dwelling with small rooms and steep stairs, and though Marion tried to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the girls by telling them that no one now really believed this to be the house where Dante had lived, they only laughed at him.

"No one can prove that it is not the house where he was born; and every one knows that it belonged to his father. But at any rate it's a charming little museum, and since I have seen all the interesting manuscripts and books there, I am more anxious than ever to read Dante," and Ellen patted her brother's arm, adding, "No, Richard, what we wish to believe we will believe, especially when it's true."

"Just like a girl," responded Richard, smiling.

One other day they made a pilgrimage to the Protestant cemetery, chiefly to please Ellen, who wished to see the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They found it without trouble, a plain marble sarcophagus on Corinthian columns, with no inscription except the initials of the poet and the date of her death. Near the sarcophagus a few pink roses were in bloom.

"How I wish I dared pick one," sighed Ellen.

"Why not?" asked Richard. "There's no one but us to see, and we won't tell."

Irma was not sure how much in earnest Richard was, but she believed he was only in fun, for he made no reply to Ellen's, "Oh, I think there's nothing worse than carrying away flowers and stones as souvenirs. I have known people to do such silly things. Surely you remember Hadrian's villa."

Now Irma, although she had no clue to Ellen's reference, at once recalled her own success in securing a fragment of marble from this same villa of Hadrian's, and what it had almost cost her. Even while she recalled it, it seemed to her that Marion glanced significantly toward her, yet she was sure she had never told him what had caused her to miss her train on that eventful evening.

One never to be forgotten day, Irma, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Caroline went down to Perugia. Mrs. Sanford and her party had been there before their arrival in Siena, and Marion, who said he hadn't time for both, preferred a trip to Pisa. But to Irma, the railway journey itself, through tunnels, past mountain towns, around the lovely shores of Lake Thrasymene, was something long to be remembered.

"If I hadn't come to Perugia," she said to Uncle Jim, "I suppose I shouldn't have known what I had missed, but now it seems as if I shouldn't have really known Italy without coming here. It is so much larger than Orvieto, and brighter, and yet it is a hill town with streets that tumble into one another, and picturesque arches, and though it hasn't an Orvieto Cathedral, it has more beautiful churches than one expects to find in a place of its size. Then that perfect little Merchants' Exchange! One could spend a day there studying the frescoes. There are more quaint carvings on the outside of the buildings than in most places we have seen, and in spite of this broad main street, with the trolley cars running through it, it seems still a mediæval town, a cheerful one, not a melancholy one like San Gimignano. Then I shall be very proud when I go home to say that I have actually been in the house where Raphael lived and taught before the world knew how great he really was."

"A long speech for a little girl," said Uncle Jim, "but it doesn't explain your unwillingness to stay with your aunt this morning while she makes a careful study of the exhibition of Umbrian art."

"Why, I think it does explain it. I was there long enough to learn Perugino by heart, his funny little bodyless angels, and his young men with thin, graceful legs and small skull caps, and of course his beautiful color."

Uncle Jim laughed at Irma's characterization of Perugino. "And is that all you remember of that great building with its treasures of art, as the books might say?"

"Of course not," said Irma indignantly. "I remember quantities of other things. Raphael, and all those strange, pious Umbrian painters, and the beautiful silver chalices from the churches, and all the carved crucifixes. On the ship going home Aunt Caroline will be able to talk to us for hours about these things, describing them exactly. Isn't it much better for a girl of my age to enjoy this lovely view? Come, let us sit down on a bench in the little piazza in front of the hotel. As we look off to the valley, so far below, we seem to be on the edge of a high mountain. Every one in Perugia seems to enjoy the view. See, there are two soldiers strolling about; a group of priests; well to do children riding around in that donkey cart; half a dozen others who are almost in rags watching them; several strangers besides ourselves; two or three dignitaries of the town. So it's a very popular place."

Again Uncle Jim smiled at Irma's astuteness. Then he left her to enjoy the view still longer, while he went down to the Municipal Building, to "rescue" Aunt Caroline, as he expressed it, from too long a stay at the exhibition of Umbrian art.

On her return to Florence the next evening, Irma wrote Lucy about her visit to Assisi. She had promised this before she left home, as Lucy had especially asked her to see for herself the thornless roses growing in St. Francis's Garden.

"I have seen the garden," she wrote, "in the cloister back of the church, and here is a leaf from the thornless rosebushes. The good brothers have these leaves already pressed on little cards, as souvenirs of the visit to St. Mary of the Angels, St. Francis's church. Inside the great church they have preserved the tiny church in which St. Francis preached, and also the cell in which he died. The great church of San Francesco on the hill above where St. Francis was buried was built in his memory. His body was finally buried there. It is an enormous building, and I will try to tell you here about the beautiful frescoes describing his life. But I have some photographs for you, and they show all his great deeds told in pictures.

"I wish I had time to tell you about Florence. But in six weeks I shall be at home again, and then how much I shall have to say! It seems to me that all the paintings you and I like best are here, and in color they are so beautiful. The Pitti Gallery is wonderful. It is in a great palace where the de Medicis (of course) once lived. It now belongs to the king, and his rooms are most beautiful. But the gallery is quite apart from the rest of the palace, and filled with the greatest paintings, Titian and Raphael and Andrea del Sarto and Botticelli and Bronzino, and some time, when I am older, I hope to come back and study them and criticise them just as I hear people doing now. Now I simply enjoy them.

"There are always many people copying in the galleries, especially in the Uffizi, and the other day we saw two sisters in their convent dress at work at easels. I suppose they were painting for their convents. There are so many things in Florence I wish we could look at together, the cathedral and Giotto's tower, and the wonderful della Robbia reliefs; you know the small cast of the singing boys that your mother gave you Christmas. Then, though this is different, I wish you could see the green, pointed hills that are outside of Florence on two sides. When I first saw them they seemed like old friends, I had seen them in so many paintings by the old painters who worked in Florence. I thought they put them in just for ornament, but now I know they couldn't help it. This was the background they were most used to here.

"But there! I have seen so many things besides pictures—the old palaces, like fortresses, and the people who seem so gentle, though they are descendants of all those old fighters who thought nothing of killing one another when they had had the slightest disagreement (or often when they hadn't had any) just because their ancestors were enemies. Yet in some ways they were very good to one another. Yesterday we met a queer-looking procession, hardly a procession, for there were not more than a dozen men, but they wore long black robes, with hoods, and black masks over their faces, and holes cut for their eyes, and, really, they were terrifying.

"Uncle Jim explained that they were the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy. Rich and poor belong to it, and have for centuries, and when a man is on duty, when he hears a certain bell ring—I think it's in the Campanile—he stops whatever he is doing and goes to the headquarters of the brothers to learn whether he is to watch with some sick man, or help bury some dead person with no friends to follow him to the grave.

"I have been disappointed not to see more picturesque costumes here, but in the cities they are never seen, and seldom in the country. The apprentice boys in different trades wear big aprons, and the nursemaids have great caps with long, colored streamers, but that is all.

"I feel rather mean, sometimes, when I think how hard you all are working now, and I am just amusing myself. When you get this, examinations will be about over, and I do wonder if George Belman will be at the head of the class.

"Well, even if I am idle now, I may have to study hard enough in August. I won't be able to make the excuse that I am not well.

"Hastily,

"Irma."

CHAPTER XVII

"Well I am glad to have found that it is really true that there were learned women in Italy in the Middle Ages. I certainly cannot forget that I have seen a statue to a woman professor of the fourteenth century, who used to lecture in this university at Bologna. If there were women professors, there must have been women students."

"Ellen thinks the little tombs on pillars outside the churches were the strangest things she saw," cried Katie.

"Not stranger than the leaning towers," interposed Irma. "I suppose the people of Bologna must be terribly afraid of earthquakes. I hated even to drive near the leaning towers."

"I did not know we were to tell only strange things we had seen," said Aunt Caroline. "I was most impressed by the Accademia. You others did not stay long enough in the gallery. Besides Raphael's St. Cecilia, there are very many pictures worth seeing; no one can really have a good idea of Guido Reni without coming to Bologna."

"Well, I enjoyed the drive through the park, and our glimpse of Carducci's house on the way back. It was all so restful after the noise of the streets," said Uncle Jim.

"There are certainly many beautiful churches in Bologna, and more homelike-looking palaces than I have seen anywhere else in Italy," said Mrs. Sanford. "We might have enjoyed a longer stay there."

"I didn't think much of the shops," interposed Katie. "There was hardly a thing I wanted to buy." Whereat the others smiled, as shopping was Katie's favorite pastime.

"You'll find them worse in Ravenna, for that is not only a decaying, but a decayed city, from all the accounts I've heard."

"I almost wish we were not going there," added Aunt Caroline. "They say it's full of malaria."

"Oh, in one short day and night we can keep out of the way of germs."

It was noon when they reached Ravenna, tired enough after a warm journey.

"Dante's tomb is only a step from here," said Marion to Irma, as they finished déjeuner. "Bring your camera and we'll go out and take a shot at it." Irma posed herself in front of the door of the domed building containing the remains of the great poet, while Marion took a snapshot. They stopped for a minute to read an inscription on an opposite house, where Garibaldi had been entertained, and turning another corner, with some little trouble, Marion found the simple dwelling where Lord Byron had lived during his year or two in Ravenna.

"Now," began Marion, "if you can get Ellen to come, I move that we three drive about the town. I am tired of too large a crowd, or perhaps it is the weather. But this is one of the days when more than three would spoil all the fun of looking at things."

As the suggestion pleased Ellen, the three started out in their carriage ahead of the others. There were no trolley cars; few people were moving around in the long, dusty streets; and many of the larger houses, or palaces, were indeed deserted mansions, with no signs of life about them.

"First to Theodoric's tomb," Marion had announced, as they started, and as they drove along he talked entertainingly about old Ravenna, especially in the last days of the Roman Empire, when the Emperor Honorius held court there, believing the place to be safe against the barbarians. Later, after the fall of Rome, Theodoric made this his city, and tried to revive the Western Empire.

"Ravenna used to be a great seaport," said Marion, "with a harbor for a large fleet, but the sea has been gradually receding until now it is five miles away."

"These marshes and this little creek, I suppose, are all that the sea has left Ravenna as a reminder of those days," said Irma.

"Yes," responded Marion, "but Theodoric's tomb is a thing we shall remember better." And the girls agreed with him a few minutes later, when they stood in the garden in front of the gray walls of the impressive circular mausoleum.

"Oh, please stand still a moment," cried Marion, as they leaned over a particularly beautiful rosebush; then a click came from the camera.

"I hate to have my picture taken when I am not expecting it," cried Ellen.

"Don't worry! Theodoric's tomb will quite overshadow us," responded Irma, in mock consolation.

After this the three drove from one church to another to see the splendid mosaics that are Ravenna's chief treasures. Saints and emperors and other great personages were there in all the glory of rich color, and scriptural truths were taught in the symbols of the early Church.

"Although the figures are sometimes out of drawing and the designs rather queer, it is just the same in these mosaics as in some of the old frescoes; they were put on the church walls to teach truth to the mass of people who could not read, and that is why I do not laugh at them."