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parapet down into the lake. She found herself under old ilextrees, among dark box hedges, and the stone parapet many rods ahead. A monk, weeding among the cabbages, lifted his head, turned pale at sight of her, and looked instantly down at his weeding again, doubtless crossing himself and praying to be kept from temptation. She saw other monks hurrying to and fro at end of the garden, evidently consulting what was to be done. She knew no one of them would dare to come and speak to a woman, so she pushed on for the parapet, and reached it. Presently a workman, not a monk, came running breathlessly: "Signorina, signorina, it is not permitted to enter here."

"I do not understand Italian," said she, smiling and bowing, and turning away and looking over the parapet. Down, down, hundreds of feet below, lay the lake, black, troubled, unfathomed. A pebble could have been swung by a string from this parapet far out into the lake. It was a sight not to be forgotten. The workman gesticulated with increased alarm and horror: "O dearest signorina, indeed it is impossible for you to remain here. The holy fathers- at this moment the donkeyman came hurrying in for dear life, with most obsequious and deprecating gestures and words, beckoning the young lady out, and explaining that it was all a mistake, that the signorina was Inglese and did not understand a word of Italian-for which gratuitous lie I hope he may be forgiven. I am sure he enjoyed the joke; at any rate, we did, and I shall always be glad that one woman has been inside the closed cloister of Palazzuola, and looked from its wall down into the lake.

We climbed round the convent on a narrow rocky path overhanging the lake, to see an old tomb "supposed to be that of Cneius Cornelius Scipio Hispallus." We saw no reason to doubt its being his. Then we climbed still farther up, into a field where there was the most wonderful massing of flowers we had yet seen the whole field was literally a tangle of many-colored vetches, clovers, chickweed, and buttercups. We stumbled and caught our feet in the vetches, as one does in blackberry-vines; but if we had fallen we should have fallen into the snowy arms of the white narcissus, with which the whole field glistened like a silver tent under the sun. Never have I seen any flower show so solemnly beautiful, unless it might have been a great morning opening I once saw of giant pond-lilies, in a pond on Block Island. But here there were in addition to the glittering white

disks, purple and pink and yellow orchids, looking, as orchids always do, like imprisoned spirits just about to escape.

As we came down the mountain the sunset lights kindled the whole Campagna into a flaming sea. The Mediterranean beyond seemed, by some strange optical effect, to be turned up around the horizon, like a golden rim holding the misty sea. The lake looked darker and darker at every step of our descent. Mount Soracte stood clear cut against the northern sky; and between us and it went up the smoke of that enchantress, Rome,— the great dome of St. Peter's looming and fading and looming and fading again through the yellow mist, like a gigantic bubble, as the power of the faith it represents has loomed and faded and loomed through all the ages.

Copyright 1872, by Roberts Brothers.

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