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Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road, Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well. And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic that is all I can say.

It took the Emperor some time to persuade Santini, and when he did give his promise it was with marked reluctance. Santini is spoken of as being as brave as a lion, an expert with the small sword, and a deadly shot. He was subsequently sent off the island, the Emperor granting him a pension of £50 per annum.

Montholon reports that Napoleon criticised the work, and remarked that some one must have assisted him. Well, so it was. The story was related to Colonel Maceroni, an Italian, by Santini, and put into readable form by him, but this does not detract from that which is really true in it, and a good deal of what O'Meara contends is confirmed therein.

Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy black jacket. "Dio Signor Padrone!" he cried. I staggered as though I had received a blow. Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!

We kept clear of Catholics throughout our tour. I had a conversation with the Dean of Malta, a most pleasant man, lately dead; but it was about the Fathers, and the Library of the great church. I knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more than copy for me the Gregorian tones. Once we heard him preach at a church in the Corso.

A guard of old warriors who had served under Napoleon, with Santini, his valet at St. Helena, at their head, escorted the queen of England to the chapel where stood Napoleon's coffin, not yet entombed, with the sword of Austerlitz lying upon it. The band in the chapel was playing "God Save the Queen," while without raged a sudden thunder-storm.

Santini was the only one who refused to sign a document put forward by Lowe in which all the officers and domestics pledged themselves to conform to the new regulations, which were, as usual, senseless and severe.

Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching appeal to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena atrocities, the main facts of which have never been contradicted.

Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless sky. True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me.

This is supposed by the commentators of Vasari to be the altarpiece painted for Giovanni di Paolo Merciajo, but Biadi traces it through the possession of Antonio, son of Zanobi Bracci, to its present possessors. The mistake arises from Vasari often confusing the names Annunciations and Assumptions with Madonnas. A Holy Family, for Andrea Santini, which awakened great admiration in Florence.