roved by Clement VI. Affiliated societies sprang up in
several Tuscan cities; and in 1347, Bernardo Tolomei, at that time
General of the Order, held a chapter of its several houses. The next
year was the year of the great plague or Black Death. Bernardo bade
his brethren leave their seclusion, and go forth on works of mercy
among the sick. Some went to Florence, some to Siena, others to the
smaller hill-set towns of Tuscany. All were bidden to assemble on
the Feast of the Assumption at Siena. Here the founder addressed his
spiritual children for the last time. Soon afterwards he died
himself, at the age of seventy-seven, and the place of his grave is
not known. He was beatified by the Church for his great virtues.

III

At noon we started, four of us, in an open waggonette with a pair of
horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped mountain-high and tied
in a top-heavy mass above us. After leaving the gateway, with its
massive fortifications and frescoed arches, the road passes into a
dull earthy country, very much like some parts--and not the best
parts--of England. The beauty of the Sienese contado is clearly on
the sandstone, not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated
farms--all were English in their details. Only the vines, and
mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect,
reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such _carpenta_ may the vestal
virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the primitive war-chariot
also, capable of holding four with ease; and Romulus may have
mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a vehicle to
Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy. The
wooden ploughs are those which Virgil knew. The sight of one of them
would save an intelligent lad much trouble in mastering a certain
passage of the Georgics.

Siena is visible behind us nearly the whole way to Buonconvento, a
little town where the Emperor Henry VII. died, as it was supposed,
of poison, in 1313. It is still circled with the wall and gates
built by the Sienese in 1366, and is a fair specimen of an intact
mediaeval stronghold. Here we leave the main road, and break into a
country-track across a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic
lines of Monte Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to
our right. The pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their clusters
of bright yellow berries, mingled with more glowing hues of red from
haws and glossy hips. On the pale grey