which whole volumes can still be bought in Italy for a few francs. He
will not go far without finding matter quite as surprising as what I
shall put down in this tale, though in all likelihood much more
unsavoury to his modern taste. Moreover, there is proof that a good many
of those accounts are quite as accurate as what a fairly decent
newspaper gives us nowadays for truth; and they are not, as a whole,
more nasty, though they are differently worded, because in those days
Boileau was calling 'a cat a cat, and Rolet a rascal,' and even people
who were not poets called a spade a spade.

A little rain fell during the night before Saint John's Eve, but the
morning of the twenty-third of June was clear and calm, and the air had
cooled a little. In Rome, for those who do not fear a little sunshine,
June is the most beautiful of all the months, and the loveliest June
days are those that follow showery nights. Then all the trees of the
great villas are in full leaf and all the flowers are in bloom: the
gorgeous, stiff-necked, courtly flowers in the formal beds and borders
of the Pope's gardens; the soft, sweet-scented, shapely carnations that
grow in broken pots and pitchers outside the humble windows of
Trastevere; the stately lilies in the marble fountains behind the
princely palace, and the roses that run riot in the poor Jewish
burial-ground halfway up the Aventine; the heavy-scented tuberose and
the rich blossom of bitter orange in the high Colonna gardens, and the
sweet basil growing in a rusty iron pail in the belfry of Santa Maria
Maggiore, where the old bell-ringer eats the savoury leaves with his
coarse bread and cheese, while he rests after ringing the bells for high
mass and waits till it is time to ring them again at noon, and he waters
the plant from his drinking pitcher. Then the wild onion is in flower
that scares away witches and keeps off the Evil Eye, and from all the
broad Campagna the scent of new-mown hay is wafted through the city
gates. Then, though the sun does not yet scorch the traveller, the shade
is already a heavenly refreshment; and though a man is not parched with
thirst, a cold draught from the Fountain of Egeria is more delicious
than any wine, and under the ancient trees of the pagan grove the
rose-purple cyclamens and the dark wood-violets are still blooming side
by side. The air is full of the breath of life, the deep earth is still
soft, and all trees and flowers and grasses still feel the