country transformed into some
northern high-lying moorland. A sort of tiny half-ruined, towered and
walled St. Gimignano, with many olives about it, seems a ghostly
apparition in it all.

_May_ 3.

X.

SAN TEODORO.

This morning, trying to lose time before lunching at Monte Savella, I
was attracted into that little round brick church nearly always
closed, which stands in a circular hole under the Palatine. You go
down a flight of steps into a round paved place: and this, with a
worn-down sacrificial altar, carved with laurel wreaths, was strewn
this morning with ivy leaves and bay. Lifting the big green drapery
which had first attracted me to that church, for it hung outside it,
and pushing the door, there was a shock of surprise; a plunge into
mystery. The round church was empty, dark, but full of the smell of
fresh incense; and in that darkness I was fairly blinded by the
effulgence of the high-altar, tier upon tier of tapers. When I was
able to see, there were three women, black, with red scapulars about
their necks, kneeling; and on either side, in the extreme corners of
the lit-up altar, two figures, or what, after a second, I decided must
be figures, kneeling also. They were on either side of the empty
praying stool in front of the altar, on which lay big gilt books and a
couple of shimmering stoles. Lit up by that blaze of candles, their
whitish folded robes looked almost like fluted marble columns; and as
they knelt they ended off like broken columns, for they were, to all
appearance, headless. Round their middle each had a white rope, about
as thick as a hand, cutting the flutings of the robe; and where the
head disappeared, a white penitent's hood thrown backward. They
remained absolutely motionless, so that after awhile I began almost to
doubt whether I had not interpreted some column or curtain into human
figures. But after about five minutes one of the two--the right-hand
one--moved slightly, just enough to show the thing was living. There
they remained motionless, stooping in their fluted robes and
thrown-back hoods, headless; and I went out, leaving them so, through
the circular yard strewn with ivy and bay all round that worn away
altar. What was it all? I have a vague notion this church is connected
with the Cave of Cacus, or the lair of Romulus' she-wolf.

_May_ 3.

WINTER 1904.

I.

PALO.

Palo again. The little pineta or grove rather of young pines, very
close together