This palace used to belong to that nice hospitable family you’ve heard about—­the Borgias.  I dare say they did a good deal of their poisoning in these very salons.

We were rather agitated the other day when a hole was discovered in one of the walls.  I put my hand way down in it as far as I could and pulled out a little bottle which contained some dark liquid.  Poison, for sure!  It looked very suspicious.  Giuseppe, our Italian butler, who is as Italian as an Italian can be, was frightened out of his senses (the few he possesses) and held the bottle at arm’s-length.

To test the contents of the vial he put half of it in some food he gave to a thin and forlorn cat who hovered about our kitchen, and for whom Giuseppe cherished no love.  However, the cat survived with eight of its lives.  Then a rabbit a friend of Giuseppe’s wanted to get rid of was given the rest.  He also lived and thrived.  After these experiments we don’t think much of Borgia poisons.

One of the rooms behind the salon (so large that it is divided into four) has the most beautiful frescoed ceiling.  It is a pity that it is so dark there that one cannot see it properly.  Perhaps originally it was a chapel and the frescoes were easier seen when the altar-candles were burning.  But can one imagine a Borgia needing a chapel or a Borgia ever praying?

Just around the corner from us is the campo di fiori (field of flowers), where one might expect to buy flowers, but it is the one thing you do not find there.  Everything else, from church ornaments to umbrellas, from silver candlesticks to old clothes, you can buy for a song not so musical as Mendelssohn’s “without words”; on the contrary, the buying of the most insignificant object is accompanied by a volume of words screamed after the non-buyer in true Jewish style.

Then around another corner you come across the Torso, made famous by that witty tailor called Pasquino, where he placarded his satirical witticisms; his post-office for anonymous letters!

We have just come home from the Pantheon.  There is held every year for the anniversary of King Victor Emmanuel’s death a memorial service pour le repos de son ame.  If it had been my soul it would never have reposed; it would have jumped up and clapped its wings to applaud the music, which, though always beautiful, to-day was divine.

I even forgot to freeze during the long two hours we stayed in the icy-cold building, open to wind and weather above and full of piercing draughts below.  The marble pavement, which has collected damp and mold since 27 B.C., has long since become so wavy and uneven that you walk very unsteadily over it; the costly marbles of which the pavement is made in fine mosaic-work have sunken away from their contours centuries ago, so that now you only realize how beautiful it must have been in its prime.

The high and imposing catafalque, erected for this occasion, which filled the whole center of the large basilique, reaching almost to the dome, was surrounded by enormous candelabra containing wax candles as big as birch-trees.