alileo, is a pious fraud. Julian was a philosopher, he
loved science, hygiene, cleanliness, peace, in a world of hysterical
worshipers of corpses, who wanted to live in ignorance, filth, and
prayer.

"But Christianity, always a religion of hallucinated persons, of
mystifiers, has never vacillated in singing the praises of parricides
like Constantine, and in calumniating the memory of great men like
Julian.

"Susanna and her friend considered that the question of whether Julian
has been calumniated by history, or not, was of no importance.

"The truth is that I feel the same way.

"From the Via di Santi Giovanni e Paolo we came out into a small square
by a church, which has a little marble ship in front of its porch. We
saw that his street is named after the _Navicella._"

A ROYAL IDYLL.

"By the side of the church of the Navicella, we passed the Villa Mattei,
and Susanna wished to go in. What a beautiful property! What splendid
terraces those in that garden are! What laurels! What lemon-trees! What
old statues! What heavy shade of pines and live-oaks!

"Kennedy, who has an admirable knowledge of every corner of Rome, has
told me that at the beginning of the XIX Century the Villa Mattei was
the property of Godoy. King Charles IV and his wife were in Rome, living
in the Barberini Palace, and they spent their days in the seclusion of
the Villa Mattei; and while the favourite and the Queen, who had now
become a harpy, walked in those poetical avenues, bordered with box
and laurel, the good Bourbon, now an old man, walked behind them, his
forehead ornamented like a faun's, enchanted to watch them; I don't know
whether he was playing the flute.

"Susanna's friend laughed at the thought of the good Charles IV, with
his waistcoat and his long coat, and his satyr's excrescences, and his
rural flute; but the allusion did not find favour with Susanna, whether
because she thought of her husband's infidelities, or because she
considered, that if her father gets to be the shoe-king, she will then
have a certain spiritual relationship to the Bourbons. In the Villa
Mattei we saw an _ediculo_, which rises at the edge of a terrace, amidst
climbing plants. There, as an inscription says, Saint Philip Neri talked
to his disciples of things divine. From the terrace one can see the
Baths of Caracalla, and part of the Roman Campagna behind them.

"We came out of the Villa Mattei and left the Piazza, della Navicella
and came down t