No wonder Mrs. Ward sent her weakest heroine here to hide. If you ever lose me, and suspect that I am in hiding, hunt for me in Orvieto. I had heard nothing of the place until I read "Eleanor," but now, if I were a guide-book, I'd put five asterisks before it and six in front of its cathedral. You will understand how I feel about it when I tell you that most of the guide-books never use more than two stars to indicate the superlative. Loomis, in his wildest flights, sometimes uses three, so I think five would about fit my estimation of the Orvieto of today.
The town is on the top of a mountain, up the almost perpendicular sides of which it is reached by a funicolare.
SIENA, ITALIE—Signora Elvina Saccaro's, Pension Tognazzi, via Sallutio Bandini 19.
I wish I might live here, on this street and in this pension, and have it all on my visiting-cards, and write it in my best style at the top of my letters. If it were engraved on my visiting-cards, and you should wish to come to see me, you would simply have to say to the cabman, "See-nyee-o-rah—Al-vee-nyee-ah—Sah-chah-ro—Pe'n-see-yo'—Tog-natz-zee—Vee-ah—Sal-lut-chio—Bahn-dee-nee—Dee-chee-ah-no-vay," but the entire address doesn't include the beautiful cloisters into which my windows open, for the place is an old monastery.
The first I ever knew of Siena was from one of Lilian Whiting's books. She spoke of Symonds' history and Mrs. Butler's "Biography of Katherine of Siena," and straightway I devoured them both. How little I thought then that I should walk the same streets and kneel at the same altar at which that saint knelt. I like her the best of all the saints "I have met," for she loved to be alone and build castles.
Siena is a rival of Rome and Florence in mediæval art and architecture. The churches are wonderfully beautiful, and filled with the choicest works of ancient and modern artists. The marble pavement and the carved white marble pulpit in the cathedral cannot be equaled.
FLORENCE:
Three weeks in the art center of the world and not one letter written! The note-book, however, is getting so fat that it begs to be put on paper and sent away to you. My bank account is correspondingly lean, made so partly by the purchase of pretty carte-postales which carry the telegraphic messages across the sea, just to show that I'm thinking and that a letter is coming some fine day.
If my porte-monnaie were not so très maigre, I'd buy many copies of Howell's "Tuscan Cities," Hutton's "Literary Landmarks of Florence," Ruskin's "Mornings in Florence," Mrs. Oliphant's "Makers of Florence," and Mrs. Browning's "The Casa Guidi Windows," and send to each of you with this inscription: "These are my sentiments."
It was with a sense of lazy delight that we wandered about Siena, watching the peasant women in their picturesque head coverings, inhaling the atmosphere of mediæval art and the restfulness that comes with it. In the same leisurely manner, armed with numerous Leghorn straws, we turned our faces northward, and found pleasant rooms awaiting us here.