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To Tusculum to-day with Maria and Du B. This is the place I carried away in my thoughts and wishes, a mere rapidly passed steep grassy hill, topped with pines and leafless chestnuts, from that motor drive last year round by Monte Compatri and Grottaferrata.
That it really stood there, and not in the hollow by Grottaferrata, we would willingly believe, for no one who has ever been there can possibly forget the glorious view or the refreshing air of those flowery slopes. No wonder the owner was fond of it.
Near Grottaferrata in a flat green field, a nun, all in white, was seated under one of the big olives: a curious biblical figure. April 26. Yesterday with P. D. P. at Porta Latina. He told me an extraordinary thing. Vicar and the Card. All this P. D. had learned when these people were still there, in the arch. But we found them gone; and the strangest sight instead.
As a hostage for the performance of these and other conditions, Cardinal Orsini was delivered over to his enemy, who conducted him as his prisoner to the Castle of Grottaferrata, and the Colonna secretly agreed to allow the Pope to go free from Sant' Angelo.
And when the Emperor and the Pope came, they left him in his dungeon. Now at Gaeta there lived a very holy man, who was Saint Nilus, and who afterwards founded the monastery of Grottaferrata, where there are beautiful wall paintings to this day. He was a Greek, like John of Calabria, and though he detested the antipope he had pity on the man and felt compassion for his countryman.
Cardinal Ascanio's numerous enemies took care to keep the accusation alive at the Vatican, and Ascanio, in fear for his life, had left Rome and fled to Grottaferrata. When summoned to Rome, he had refused to come save under safe-conduct.
These pictures are indeed marvellous more marvellous than beautiful, like so many Byzantine productions; their value is such that the parchment has now been declared a "national monument." It is sternly guarded, and if it is moved out of Rossano as happened lately when it was exhibited at Grottaferrata it travels in the company of armed carbineers.