as he can when his chauffeur isn't available.

We stopped so long at the Certosa that the sun had gone far down the
west as we walked through the beautiful, strange gateway to the roadside
resting-place of our car.

Where crowds come from in the country is as mysterious as where pins and
hairpins go to; but anyhow, there was a wide ring of people round the
automobile, in which our hired caretaker sat gazing condescendingly on
the throng. When we arrived on the scene, with our hands full of scents
made and bottled by the banished monks, quaint pottery, and photographs
of frescoes, general interest was transferred to us, but only for a
moment. Even Maida's beauty failed as an attraction beside the
starting-handle of the car, when the Chauffeulier turned it.

"Don't you see many motors here?" asked Sir Ralph of our deposed guard,
and he shook his head. "Not one a month," he said, "though they say that
some of the rich men in Milan use them. I do not know where they go."

Almost as he spoke a big one shot by, heading for Alessandria and--who
knows but for Cuneo? When we came to think, it was the first we had seen
since Ventimiglia, though on the French side of the Riviera the things
had been a pest to everybody--who hadn't one.

As we started, the sinking sun turned a million tiny clouds floating up
from behind the world into rose-pink marabout feathers, which by-and-by
were silvered round their curly edges by a wonderful light kindled
somewhere in the east. It grew brighter and brighter as the
rose-coloured plumes first took fire down at the western horizon, and
then burned to ruddy ashes. When half the sky was silver up came
floating a huge pearl, glistening white, and flattened out of the
perfect round on one side, like two or three of the biggest pearls on
Mamma's long rope.

Even in America I never saw the sunset-glow so quickly quenched by a
white torrent of moonlight. But on this night it was not white; it was
soft and creamy, like mother-of-pearl. And as the opal gleam of the sky
darkened to deep amethyst the stars came out clear and sparkling and
curiously distinct one from the other, like great hanging lamps of
silver, diamond-crusted.

All the world was bathed in this creamy light, while the sky
scintillated with jewels like the flashing of a spangled fan, as we
drove into the outskirts of Milan.

It had been lucky for us that there was a moon, as we had a crumpled
brass waffle in the place of our big la