We have no means of knowing whether the presentation of the poems to the great merchant was followed by any special result. But that the reception of the wanderers at Augsburg generally was flattering and satisfactory is recorded in a letter[97] from Olympia to Gregorio Giraldi, the gouty old friend, now drawing very near his end, who used to write verses to her in her girlhood. "We are still," she writes, "with our excellent friend; and I am delighted with my stay here. I pass my entire day in literary pursuits—me cum Musis delecto;—and have no business to draw me away from them. I also apply myself to the study of Holy Writ, which is so productive of peace and contentment. Nothing can be more favourable than the reception my husband has met with in this town. Our affairs are looking well, and, by God's help, will have a happy issue." A few months before the date of this letter, while Olympia was pining on account of her husband's absence, she spoke in her dialogue with Lavinia della Rovere, of her regrets at having "intoxicated herself with the poison" of the classical writers. And now we find her again "delighting herself with the Muses." The compatibility of classical studies with a strictly Christian tone and habit of thought and feeling, which many religionists have decided in the negative, seems to have been mooted by Olympia, and by the advice of her learned and devout friends affirmed. For in a letter to Curione written about this time, she says that "since pious men approve it," she will continue her classical studies and writings. But it would seem, that these "delights with the Muses," however classical, were henceforward for the most part religious in their nature. For almost all that remains of her composition subsequent to this period, with the exception of her letters, are translations from the psalms into Greek verse. These her husband used to set to music, and the singing of them would often form the evening amusement of their little circle. One of these translations had been sent to Curione, who was probably the chief of those pious friends who encouraged her to continue to write. "I have read," he says, "the psalm that you have translated into Greek, and I am delighted with it. I wish that you would treat more of them in the same way. We should then have no cause to envy the Greeks their Pindar. Persevere, then, my Olympia, in the path to which the Muse invites you. Place upon your brow the sacred laurel; for you have drawn your poetic inspiration from a purer fount than Sappho of old." [Sidenote: WITH GEORGE HERMANN.]