I decided to join Signor Tanni’s classes at once, and persuaded Mrs. Barfleur and Mrs. Q. to accompany me at different times. I must say that in spite of the commonplaceness of the idea my mornings and afternoons with Signor Tanni and his company of sightseers proved as delightful as anything else that befell me in Rome. He was a most interesting person, born and brought up, as I learned, at Tivoli near the Villa d’Este, where his father controlled a small inn and livery stable. He was very stocky, very dark, very ruddy, and very active. Whenever we came to the appointed rendezvous where his lecture was to begin, he invariably arrived, swinging his coat-tails, glancing smartly around with his big black eyes, rubbing and striking his hands in a friendly manner, and giving every evidence of taking a keen interest in his work. He was always polite and courteous without being officious, and never for a moment either dull or ponderous. He knew his subject thoroughly of course; but what was much better, he had an eye for the dramatic and the spectacular. I shall never forget how in the center of the Forum Romanum he lifted the cap from the ancient manhole that opens into the Cloaca Maxima and allowed us to look in upon the walls of that great sewer that remains as it was built before the dawn of Roman history. Then he exclaimed dramatically: “The water that Cæsar and the emperors took their baths in no doubt flowed through here just as the water of Roman bath-tubs does to-day!” On the Palatine, when we were looking at the site of the Palace of Elagabalus, he told how that weird worthy had a certain well, paved at the bottom with beautiful mosaic, in order that he might leap down upon it and thus commit suicide, but how he afterwards changed his mind--which won a humorous smile from some of those present and from others a blank look of astonishment. In the House of Nero, in one of those dark underhill chambers, which was once out in the clear sunlight, but now, because of the lapse of time and the crumbling of other structures reared above it, is deep under ground, he told how once, according to an idle legend, Nero had invited some of his friends to dine and when they were well along in their feast, and somewhat intoxicated, no doubt, it began to rain rose leaves from the ceiling. Nothing but delighted cries of approval was heard for this artistic thought until the rose leaves became an inch thick on the floor and then two and three, and four and five inches thick, when the guests tried the doors. They were locked and sealed. Then the shower continued until the rose leaves were a foot deep, two feet deep, three feet deep, and the tables were covered. Later the guests had to climb on tables and chairs to save themselves from their rosy bath; but when they had climbed this high they could climb no higher, for the walls were smooth and the room was thirty feet deep. By the time the leaves were ten