OLTAIRE'S LAZE LEMAN HOME.]

They enjoyed the beauty of Lake Geneva, and were charmed by the
attractions of "Ferney," Voltaire's home on Leman's shore, and enjoyed
the solemn gorge-valley of the Rhone, and through the Simplon passed
into fair Italy. As they "drew near a small chapel in a rock Casper
flourished his whip, calling out the word 'Italia!' I pulled off my hat
in reverence," wrote the author. Down the steep mountains, over bridged
torrents, past the hill-towns and valley-lands, they came to the City of
the Lily,--fair Florence of the Arno. "As early as 1829," Cooper
thought, "the unification of Italy was irresistible."

[Illustration: THE SIMPLON PASS.]

[Illustration: FLORENCE, ITALY.]

[Illustration: PALAZZO RICASOLI, FLORENCE, ITALY.]

In Florence a home was soon found in the Palazzo Ricasoli, Via del
Cocomero. Lofty of ceiling--twenty feet--was their apartment, in which
they enjoyed "two noble bed-rooms, several smaller ones, a large
drawing-room, dining-room, baths, a small court and garden within the
iron gates, and all for the modest sum of sixty dollars per month." The
oil burned in their lamps the home-folk "would be happy to use on their
salads." Here, around the cheering glow of great wood-fires, the
American author would gather his friends, old and new. From Otsego days
a blazing hearth-stone ever rejoiced his cheery nature, and his way of
laying the wood and nursing the flames horrified his Italian servants as
waste of fuel. The chill of the _tra montana_ brought into this circle
of warmth and light many eminent foreigners; and of home-country folk,
that true American, Horatio Greenough, often basked in the bright glow
of the author's wood-fires at Florence.

Later Greenough wrote: "Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair after my
return to Italy. He employed me as I wish to be employed; and up to this
moment has been a father to me." Greenough's last work was a bust of his
illustrious friend, the American novelist, which he proposed to cast in
bronze, at his own expense, and place in the field where stands the Old
Mill in Newport, and where the opening scene of "The Red Rover" is laid.
He took counsel with Cooper's friends as to a monument to the author,
and among his papers was found an elaborate design for the work.

[Illustration: HORATIO GREENOUGH.]

Cooper loved to encourage rising talent in young artists. He gave them
orders, and also his cheering sympathy. One of these wrote that Coo