Count Gianotti came this afternoon to tell us that we are to take the train leaving here at three o’clock.  Johan and I went out for a stroll while the maid and valet were packing.  We wandered through the Victor Emmanuel Gallery, then went into the ever-enchanting cathedral.  I never tire of seeing this wonderful place.  I pay my two soldi for a chair and sit there, lost in thought and admiration.  The dimness and silence make it very solemn and restful.  Every little while a procession of intoning priests shuffle by to go to some altar in one of the side-chapels for some particular service.  Sometimes it is a baptism, and the peasants whose babies are going to be baptized stand in an awed group around the font.  Everything is done in a most matter-of-fact way.  I look at the splendid carvings and filigree of marble and wonder how any one mountain can have furnished so much marble, since it started furnishing hundreds of years ago.  It is lucky that the mountain belongs exclusively to the Church!

On my return to the hotel I found a card from Countess Marcello, saying that the Queen had suggested our going to the Scala Theater, and that we were to occupy the royal box.  She has just left Monza.  She is lady in waiting to the Queen, and, her duties having finished for this month, she is replaced by the Princess Palavicini.  She told us that there were at present no guests at Monza.  She said that there are three categories of toilets:  “good, better, and best” (as she put it), besides the unexpected which always arrived in the shape of court mournings, and one must be prepared for them all.  When the King’s sister (Princess Clothilde) is there, only severe, sober, and half-high dresses are worn.  For the Queen’s mother (the Duchess of Genoa) the usual evening dress, decolletee, with a train.  But when the Queen of Portugal comes everything must be extra magnificent, with tiaras and jewels galore and the last things of modernity.

We arrived in the theater just as the curtain was going down on the first act.  The audience stared steadily at us with and without opera-glasses.  I suppose people thought that we were members of some royal family.  As the performance was not interesting and I was tired, we left at an early hour.  I scribble this off to you just befoje going to bed.

MONZA, November 3d.

You see that I am writing on royal paper, which is a sign that we are here.  Now I will tell you about things as far as we have got.  At the station in Milan, Count Gianotti met us and put us safely in the carriage, which bore a kingly crown; Princess Brancaccio accompanied us.  On arriving at Monza station we found Signor Peruzzi waiting for us, and an open barouche drawn by four horses mounted by postilions from the royal stables.  We drove through the town and through the long avenue leading to the chateau at a tremendous pace, people all taking off their hats as we passed.