“But Capolo Roscia was worse. He came one night to a masseria. The doors were barred, but he forced his way in with his band. The head of the farm hid himself in the straw, but he was found and dragged out. All the men in the masseria, eighteen in number, were brought out and made to sit in a row. ‘Now you must all be shaved,’ said Capolo Roscia, and he cut all their eighteen heads off and put them in a basket.
“‘Oh, in that time when we were brigand-hunting we did not stop much to inquire how far they were guilty. “A ginocchio: avete cinque minuti,” we shouted to a peasant if we caught him. “Oh, ma signori, signori!” he would say. “A ginocchio! Un minuto, due, tre, cinque—bo-o-o-ah!” and he was done for; for he had given the brigands provisions, and so he was as bad as themselves. Even with i sindaci, well, we often did the same; but—we got rid of the brigands.’”
“Easter Sunday, April 21.—To St. Peter’s. The service was under the dome, but the group around the shrine would not call up even a reminiscence of the glorious services under the Papacy. The relics were shown afterwards from a high gallery—the spear-head of Longinus, the bit of the true cross, the napkin of Veronica, to the sight of which seven thousand years’ indulgence is attached. I gazed hard, but could only see its glittering frame, nor could any other member of the congregation see any more.”
After leaving Rome, I spent ten days with a pleasant party of friends at beautiful Perugia, and then went on to Venice, where I saw much of Ainslie Bean, who took me in his gondola to many places I wanted to see, and much also of the Comte and Comtesse de Lützow, on the eve then of the great but still unforeseen sorrow of losing the dear daughter Maude who was the sunshine of their lives. I was at the Pension Anglaise, crowded with lively, kindly ultra-English people, whose mistakes were amusing. “Gesu-Maria!” suddenly exclaimed the gondolier on narrowly escaping a concussion at a sharp corner. “Why on earth does he say ‘Je suis marié’?” said a Mrs. R. Afterwards I had a week’s hard work in intense heat in Eastern France, and reached home on May 27.
To Miss Leycester.
“Holmhurst, May 27, 1889.—How quiet it is here! how shady! how thankful I am to be back! The heat yesterday at Amiens was appalling, but I reached the green retreat this morning at nine, a telegram announcing my advent having only been delivered five minutes before, so that I had the amusement of seeing Holmhurst as I had never done before, in complete un-dress.... I never saw such foliage. Charles II. might easily hide this year in any of the oak trees.”
Journal.