otally
disappeared, hidden, heaven knows where, in this country of which
there seems an unlimited amount: always more green slopes, more dry
vineyards, more distant Campagna. And yet, seemingly close by, the
great bells of St. Peter's ring out the thanksgiving service for the
Pope.

Antonia said, "Shall we go for a minute into St. Peter's? It will be
all lit up."

And, in that endless emptiness, the words sounded absurd. St. Peter's?
Rome? Where?

_March_ 13.

II.

PALAZZO CENCI.

This morning, rambling along the unfinished Tiber quays, and the
half pulled-down houses of the old Jewish quarter, attracted a
little, perhaps, by the name "Vicolo dei Cenci," I let myself be
importuned by a red-haired woman into entering the Casa di Beatrice
Cenci, a dreary, squalid palace, given over to plasterers among the
dust-heaps.

And afterwards, beguiled further up flights and flights of black
stairs into someone's filthy little kitchen, I was made to look down,
through a mysterious window, into the closed church of the Cencis.
Looking down, always a curious impression, into a dark, musty place
and onto vague somethings which are, they tell me, the tombs of the
Cencis.

A grim and sordid impression altogether; and heaven knows how
sickening a story. Yet what power of popular romance, of great poetry,
has enveloped it all! A story one would be ashamed to read through in
a cheap newspaper ... and yet!...

_March_ 24.

III.

MONTE CAVO.

Yesterday, with Maria, Antonia, and the poet Pascarella, to Rocca di
Papa, lunching in a piece of the woods which M. has bought.

The grass of the campagna, beyond the aqueducts, is powdered with
daisies like a cake with sugar. Further, where the slopes begin, the
exquisite brilliant pink of the peach blossom is on the palest yellow
criss-cross of reeds in the dry vineyards.

I am struck once more by the majestic air of that opening square of
Frascati, expanding upwards into terraces, lawns, and ilexes, all
flanked by pinnacled and voluted buildings, Villa Aldobrandini, or
whatever it is.

We drive up through the sere chestnut woods, where wind-flowers and
blue squills come up everywhere among the russet leaves. Suddenly, in
the faint light, above a clearing, the stacked white trunks, the lilac
sereness of the trees; and high up, shimmering and misty, the rock of
Rocca di Papa with its piled-up houses.

Then through the woods again, on foot, up a path first deep