The padrone of the Albergo at Perugia was a man of parts. He could speak English. When we complimented him on a black cat which was always in his office, he answered, with eyes fixed on vacancy, and pausing between each word like a child saying its lesson: "Yes-it-is-a-good-cat. I-have-one-dog-and-four-cats. This-cat-is-the-fath-er-of-the-oth-er-cats. One-are-red-and-three-is-white." And when we had occasion to thank him, he knew enough to tell us we were very much obliged.

But we gave him small chance to display his powers. There was little to keep us in the Albergo, when, after a few minutes' walk we could be in the piazza, where the sun shone on Pisano's fountain, and on the Palazzo of the Baglioni and the Duomo opposite. But what a fall was there! A couple of gendarmes, priests walking two by two, a few beggars, were the only people we saw in this broad piazza, where at one time men and women, driven to frenzy by the words of Saint Bernardino, spoken from the pulpit by the Duomo door, almost fell into the fire they had kindled to burn their false hair and ornaments, their dice and cards; and where at another Baglioni fought, with the young Raphael looking on to paint later one at least of the combatants; and where the beautiful Grifonetto lay in death agony, the avengers of his murdered kinsmen waiting to see him die, the heads of his fellow-assassins looking grimly down from the Palazzo walls, and Atalanta, his mother, giving him forgiveness for the deed, for which but yesterday she had cursed him. In the aisles of the Duomo, once so stained with the blood of the Baglioni that they had to be purified with wine before prayers could again be offered in them, a procession of white-robed priests and acolytes, bearing cross and censer, passed from one chapel to another before a congregation of two or three old women. It was the same in the narrow streets; all is now still and peaceful where of old Baglioni, single-handed, kept back the forces of Oddi, their mortal foes. Only the memory of their fierceness remains; though I have two friends who say that in the dark street behind the Palazzo, where brave Simonetto and Astore fought the enemy until corpses lay in piles around them, they one night heard voices singing sadly, as if in lamentation; and these voices led them onwards under one archway and then another until suddenly the sounds ceased. But when they turned to go homewards, lo! they had lost their way. The next morning they returned that they might by daylight see whence the music could have come. But all along the street was a dead wall. None but spirits could have sung there; and what spirits would dare to lift their voices in this famous street but those of Baglioni?

It must be the degeneracy of modern warriors that sets these heroes of the old school to singing lamentations. The Grifonettos and Astores who feasted on blood, could they come back to life and their native town, would have little sympathy with the captains and colonels who now drink tamarind-water in the caffÈ, booted and spurred though the latter be. The caffÈ is everywhere the lounging-place of Italian officers, but in Perugia it seemed to be their headquarters. There was one on the Corso, a few doors from the Palazzo, which they specially patronized. They were there in the morning even before the shops were opened, and again at noon, and yet again in the evening, while at other times they walked to and fro in front of it, as if on guard. But though the youngest as well as the oldest patronized it, the distinctions of rank between them were observed as scrupulously as Dickens says they are with the Chatham and Rochester aristocracy. The colonel associated with nothing lower than a major, the latter in turn drawing the line at the captain, and so it went down to the third lieutenant, who lorded it only over the common soldier. On the whole, I think the lesser officers had the best of it; for whether they eat cakes and drank sweet drinks, or played cards, they were always sociable and merry. Whereas, sometimes the colonel sat solitary in his grandeur, silent except for the few words with the boy selling matches as he hunted through the stock to find a box with a pretty picture.

We were long enough in Perugia to carry the Abate's letters to San Pietro. The monks to whom they were written were away, but a third came in their place and gave us welcome. He showed J. the inner cloister, to which I could not go: women were not allowed there. It was because of my skirts, he said; and yet he too wore skirts, and he spread out his cassock on each side. While they were gone I waited in the church. I wonder if ghostly voices are never heard within it. The monks, long dead, whose love and even life it was to make it beautiful until its walls and ceilings were rich and glowing, its choir a miracle of carving, and its sacristy hung with prayer-inspiring pictures, have, like the Baglioni, cause to bewail the degenerate latter day. The beauty they created now lives but for the benefit of a handful of monks whose monastery is turned into a Boys' Agricultural School, and for the occasional tourist. Later from the high terrace of the park opposite San Pietro we saw the boys in their blue blouses digging and hoeing in the fields under the olives, where probably the monks themselves once worked. There is in this little park an amphitheatre with archway, bearing the Perugian griffin in the centre. It is shaded by dense ilex-trees, from whose branches a raven must once have croaked; for evil has come upon the place, as it has upon the gray monastery so near. Instead of nobles and men-at-arms and councillors of state, two or three poor women with their babies sat on the stone benches gossiping. And as we lingered there in the late afternoon there came from San Pietro the sound, not of monks chanting vespers, but of some one playing the "Blue Danube" on an old jingling piano. Only the valley below, and the Tiber winding through it, and the mountains beyond are unchanged.