About three miles further, still always ascending the slope of the Apennine, is a Servite monastery which is the cradle and mother establishment of the order.  Sometimes we used to extend our rambles thither.  The brethren had the reputation, I remember, of possessing a large and valuable collection of prints.  They were not very willing to exhibit it; but I did once succeed in examining it, and, as I remember, found that it contained nothing much worth looking at.

A much more favourite amusement of mine was a picnic arranged to last for two or three days, and intended to embrace objects further afield.  Vallombrosa was a favourite and admirably well selected locality for this purpose.  And many a day and moonlight night never to be forgotten, have I spent there.  Sometimes we pushed our expeditions to the more distant convents—­or “Sanctuaries” as they were called—­of Camaldoli and Lavernia.  And of one very memorable excursion to these two places I shall have to speak in a subsequent chapter.

Meantime those dull mutterings as of distant thunder, which Signor Alberi had, as mentioned at a former page, first signalised to me, were gradually growing into a roar which was attracting the attention and lively interest of all Europe.

Of the steady increase in the volume of this roar, and of the results in which it eventuated, I need say little here, for I have already said enough in a volume entitled Tuscany in 1849 and in 1859.  But I may jot down a few recollections of the culminating day of the Florentine revolution.

I had been out from an early hour of that morning, and had assisted at sundry street discussions of the question, What would the troops do?  Such troops as were in Florence were mainly lodged in the forts, the Fortezza da Basso, which I have had occasion to mention in a former chapter, and the other situated on the high ground beyond the Boboli Gardens, and therefore immediately above the Pitti Palace.  My house at the corner of the large square, now the Piazza dell Indipendenza, was almost immediately under the walls and the guns of the Fortezza da Basso; but I felt sure that the troops would simply do nothing; might very possibly fraternise with the people; but would in no case burn a cartridge for the purpose of keeping the Grand Duke on his throne.

A short wide street runs in a straight line from the middle of one side of the Piazza to the fort; and a considerable crowd of people, at about ten o’clock, I think, began to advance slowly up this street towards the fortezza, and I went with them.  High above our heads on the turf-covered top of the lofty wall, there were a good number, perhaps thirty or forty soldiers, not drawn up in line, but apparently merely lounging and enjoying the air and sunshine.  They had, I think all of them, their muskets in their hands, but held them idly and with apparently no thought whatever of using them.  I felt confirmed in my opinion that they had no intention of doing so.