heart."

"Bravo! Bravo!"

The quatrain was made one evening when we were capping verses with
G----.

"Give me some cigarettes," I said softly to my aunt.

"Very well, later."

I thought she had forgotten, but at Monaco she wrapped a number in
paper and gave them to me. She, who cries out when I ask her for
them at home. At Monaco we parted, and those horrid cigarettes made
me cry. I was sorry for the poor old grandfather, my aunt,
everybody. I am vexed to have to go with Mamma. I was with her at
Spa and, besides, I am used to my aunt.

Oh! torture! Imagine the tediousness of a journey in Italy. Mamma
and Dina do not know Italian. I refused to use my tongue; I can
scarcely use my limbs. By dint of complaining because I was not with
my aunt, and saying: "Who asked you to come with us? I ought to go
with my aunt. Why do you come with me?" I obtained a passive
obedience and an alacrity impossible to imagine.

Night found us in a car. I complained, wept softly, and said the
most provoking things to my mother, like the brute I am.

At last, toward three o'clock, Monday, January 3d, ruins, columns,
aqueducts began to appear on the dreary plain called the Roman
Campagna, and we entered the station of Rome. I saw nothing, I heard
nothing. I was utterly limp after these twenty-four hours without
sleep.

We were taken to the Hotel de Londres, Piazza di Spagna, and we
occupied an apartment on the ground floor, with a yellow
drawing-room that was very fresh and neat, I was tired and
depressed, in the condition in which I needed some one to sustain
me. And Mamma was crying. Oh, dear!

We must set to work very, very quickly to look about us. There is
nothing I hate like changing.

New streets, strange faces, and no Mediterranean. Only the miserable
Tiber. I am utterly wretched when I am in a new city. I shut myself
up in my room to collect my scattered wits a little.

Tuesday, January 4th, 1876.

Yesterday Mamma wrote to B----, the brother of the empress's
physician, and to-day he came to our house. He devotes himself to
painting. After this visit, we went out. Oh! the ugly city, the
impure air! What a deplorable mixture of ancient magnificence and
modern filth!

We went through the Corso, the Via Gregoriana, the Forum of Hadrian,
the Forum of Rome, we saw the gates of Septimus Severus, and
Constantine, the Via Pia, the Coliseum, but everything is still
vague, I don't recognise myself. The drive on the Pincio is