ills, our after chronicles might have been
very different. But we walk over precipices with our eyes open, or pass
safely along their verge in the dark, and only the Power who made us
knows why. Providence takes very long views.

XIX

Burnt Sienna--The Aquila Nera--A grand, noble, gentle
creature--The most beautiful woman in the world--Better
friends than ever--A shadow brooded--Boys are whole-souled
creatures--Franklin Pierce--Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon,
Donatello--The historian of the Netherlands--When New
England makes a man--The spell of Trevi--An accession of
mishaps--My father's mustache--Three steps of stone, the
fourth, death--Havre, Redcar, Bath, London, Liverpool.

Siena is distant from Florence, in a direct line, not more than fifty
miles, but the railway turns the western flank of the mountains, and
kept us full three hours on the trip. I had long been familiar with a
paint in my color-box called Burnt Sienna, and was now much interested
to learn that it was made of the yellow clay on which the city of Siena
stands; and when I discovered for myself that this clay, having formed
the bed of some antediluvian ocean, was full of fossil shells, I
thought that Siena was a place where I would do well to spend one of my
lifetimes. The odd, parti-colored architecture of the town did not
so much appeal to me, and certainly the streets and squares were less
attractive in themselves than either the Roman or the Florentine ones.
The shells were personally ugly, but they were shells, and fossils into
the bargain, and they sufficed for my happiness.

The Storys had a villa in Siena, and my father certainly had in the back
part of his mind an idea of settling there, or elsewhere in Italy, now
or later; but after ten days we were on our travels again. There were
no ruins to be seen, that I remember, but many churches and frescoes and
old oil-paintings, which I regarded with indifference. Mediaeval remains
did not attract me like classic ones. It was here that Story drew the
caricatures which I have already spoken of, and from the windows of the
room, as the twilight fell, we could see the great comet, then in its
apogee of brilliance. Where will the world be when it comes again? We
had rooms at the Aquila Nera, looking out on the venerable, gray Palazzo
Tolomei. The narrow streets were full of people; the steepness and
irregularity of the thoroughfares of the city produced a fee