From that interview this morning, still not much more than half awake and alert, we went to the Palace to see the “cabinet of coins and antiques.” The “coins” always overwhelm me, so much time must be given to do anything with them, so I am disheartened. I passed soon to the “antiques.” How your eyes would snap to find themselves gazing at the seal ring of Alaric, a large sapphire with a head in intaglio and a heavy setting looking like hammered gold. What a giant he must have been if the size of the ring did no injustice to the finger. And a large vase of Cleopatra’s, gold-gilt with a wide border of exquisite cameos, carvings and precious gems, and the center a portrait of herself in “jewels, rich jewels of the mine.” Also, an agate vase of twenty-nine and one-half inches in diameter, from the bridal treasure of Mary of Burgundy. Nothing interested me more than a bronze tablet, with a prohibition of the Bacchanalia, 186 years before Christ. I made out a few words in the time I gave it.
Yesterday morning I was at the Imperial Library, in the same edifice; the right name is the Imperial Berg. There I saw fragments of the Gospel of the Sixth Century on purple parchment with silver and gold letters; of Genesis, of the Fourth; a map of the Roman roads, A. D. 160; Tasso’s own copy (manuscript) of “Jerusalem Delivered,” and the prayer-book of Charles V. The poet was not sparing of erasures, and the prayer-book was pretty well thumbed. “Men die but their works live after them—” and what tales they do tell on them.
I could write on and on, filling up the interval since the last letter, but, to quote from an old Cincinnati physician, “Enough is a plenty.”
L. G. C.
Vienna, October 17, 1883.
SIENA.
EBRUARY 22d, we took the train for Nice, via Lyons and Marseilles. Spent the first night at the former and remained long enough next morning for a drive that took in the best part of the busy, populous, prosperous city. It is ever so much larger than I was thinking of, and its situation is one of extreme beauty. It is situated at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone. Those lovely rivers wind picturesquely through it, spanned by handsome bridges—the Rhone by eight and the Saone by thirteen—dividing it into three parts, edged by broad quays and shaded by trees. The ranges of near hills are surmounted by fine residences, from which the loveliest views stretch out to misty mountains in the distance to the east, south and west. Nothing was wanting.