IV.

SAN SABA.

San Saba to-day, for the second time this year, with those pleasant
English people the P.s. It was Thursday, and we were not admitted into
the garden (though we were very kindly allowed into the loggia)
because the pupils of the Germanic College were having their weekly
recreation, a hundred of them. We saw their gowns, like geraniums or
capsicums, moving between the columns and under the blossoming
orange-trees. And a party of them sat among the fallen pillars and
broken friezes outside the little churches singing--and what?--the
Lorelei in chorus, "Sie kaemmt sich mit goldenem Kamme und singt ein
Lied dabei." Oh, friendly romance of Germany, lurking even in the
house of the Lord, and cheek-by-jowl with De Propaganda Fide!

PAL. SCIARRA, _April_ 16.

V.

A CONVENT.

This morning with Antonia at S. Cecilia in Trastevere, having a
special permission from Minister to see the Cavalieri frescoes in the
nuns' choir gallery (like poorer, clumsier, _jowlier_ Duccio;
Byzantine, with antique braided hair and "Greek" features). The
impression of the convent _clausura_--little vestibule, a strongly
grated small window inside it, apparently ending only in darkness; the
"Ruota," behind which a voice spoke mysteriously as through a
telephone, the wooden shelf turning on itself and offering us a
key--key opening (by instructions of mysterious voice) an adjacent
small room: two straw chairs on either side of small table before a
thick black grating; another grating behind that, and a kind of
perforated shutter between. The latter rattled away, a nun's face
uncertainly seen--faded cheeks, immense eyes, white dress, behind the
black double bars; the key restored to the Ruota, and engulfed after
directions from the mysterious voice; another door, sound of keys and
bolts. In all this a predominant and lugubrious impression of keys and
bolts. The little portress, Donna Maria Geltude (for these nuns are
Benedictines, and have the handle to their names), a wizen, very ugly
little woman, in incredibly shabby but spotless dress, white wool
washed threadbare to an appearance of linen, voluminous skirts and
black veil. A glazed cloister (with twelfth-century columns), a few
pictures, seventeenth-century tables and chairs, as in a passage; more
passages similar, with _prie Dieu_ and scant peasant furniture. The
little library, a smallish glass press with nothing but Filotea, Fr.
de Sales, Vite dei Santi, &c. Mi