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The old arch over the Appian way is still standing, near the modern Porta San Sebastiano through which we entered on the far-famed road. Here and there it is quite entire, and we walked over the stones once worn by the feet of Virgil and Horace and Cicero.

People were led, perhaps to some extent by impertinent curiosity, by the lazy desire to have some opinion to give upon that now legendary household of the besotten, sleepy, nauseous old King of England and his terribly virtuous and intellectual young Queen, to the palace in Via San Sebastiano; and men and women of fashion led thither, as to one of the curious sights of Florence, their country cousins and their distinguished visitors from other parts.

The Count and Countess of Albany appear to have inhabited the Casino Corsini until 1777, when they sent for the greater part of the furniture of their Roman house, and established themselves in a palace, bought of the Guadagnis and later sold to the Duke of San Clemente, between the now suppressed Porta San Sebastiano and the Garden of St. Mark's.

Lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. She longed to go to the fair, and that made her sad. But there was also another reason for her depression. Sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not written to her. This was bad enough. But there was something worse.

"But there was one to-day " began one of the others. "I heard it of Alfonso he saw her at the bull-fight Sebastiano and tried to find out " He made a movement at this moment which brought Pepita directly within his view. She had been hidden from him before by the figure of Jovita. He stopped with his wine untasted and stared at her.

This was the land he had loved, the land he had belonged to. "I should like to hear the 'Pastorale' now," she said, presently. "But Sebastiano " A new thought seemed to strike her. "I wonder how some women can bear their sorrows," she said. "Don't you, Emile?" "What sorrows do you mean?" he asked. "Such a sorrow as poor Lucrezia has to bear. Maurice always loved me.

But if he fails to enrich himself, or if she is unfaithful to him, he never comes back at all. It is thus clear that a penniless young man cannot go to America until he is married. "That is very true," Ruggiero repeated. "And we must eat," said Sebastiano, who knew by experience the truth of what he said. "And we are always hungry. It is very strange.

And of the truth of this there is also a proof in the same Pace, in the Chapel of Agostino Chigi, where Raffaello had executed the Sibyls and Prophets; for Sebastiano, wishing to paint some things on the stone in the niche that remained to be painted below, in order to surpass Raffaello, caused it to be incrusted with peperino-stone, the joinings being filled in with fired stucco; but he spent so much time on cogitations that he left the wall bare, for, after it had remained thus for ten years, he died.

It is somewhat painful to think that Michelangelo could have lent a willing ear to the malignant babble of a man so much inferior to himself in nobleness of nature have listened when Sebastiano taunted Raffaello as "Prince of the Synagogue," or boasted that a picture of his own was superior to "the tapestries just come from Flanders."

That Lucrezia might think that she had reason to pray he understood, though he doubted whether the Madonna and all the saints could do much for the reclamation of his friend Sebastiano. But why should the padrona kneel there out-of-doors sending up such earnest petitions? She was not a Catholic. He had never seen her pray before.