He led off by easy stages into vague speculations as to the transcendental character of race impulses; and I knew I had chanced upon a profound scholar as well as a very genial person. I was very sorry now that I had been so rude to him. By the time we reached Pisa we were fast friends, and he told me that he had a distinguished friend, now a resident of Assisi, and that he would give me a letter to him which would bring me charming intellectual companionship for a day or two. I promised to seek him out at his hotel; and as we passed the Leaning Tower and the Baptistery, not so very distant from the railroad track as we entered Pisa, he gave me his card. I recognized the name as connected with some intellectual labors of a most distinguished character and I said so. He accepted the recognition gracefully and asked me to be sure and come. He would show me around Rome. I gathered my bags and stepped out upon the platform at Pisa, eager to see what I could in the few hours that I wished to remain. CHAPTER XXX A STOP AT PISA Baedeker says that Pisa has a population of twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the spell of a score of places like this as I walked out into the open square facing the depot. The most amazing botch of a monument I ever saw in my life I saw here--a puffing, swelling, strutting representation of Umberto I, legs apart, whiskers rampant, an amazing cockade, all the details of a gaudy uniform, a breast like a pouter-pigeon--outrageous! It was about twelve or thirteen times as large as an ordinary man and not more than twelve or fifteen feet from the ground! He looked like a gorgon, a monster to eat babies, ready to leap upon you with loud cries. I thought, “In Heaven’s name! is this what Italy is coming to! How can it brook such an atrocity?”