[5] Cacus, the son of Vulcan and Medusa, was a famous robber who breathed fire and smoke and laid waste Italy. He made the mistake, however, of robbing Hercules of some cows, and for this Hercules strangled him. [6] "Thick as leaves in Vallombrosa" has come to be the form of words as most people quote them. But Milton wrote ("Paradise Lost," Book I. 300-304):-- "He called His legions, angel-forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa where the Etrurian shades, High over-arched, embower." Wordsworth, by the way, when he visited Vallombrosa with Crabb Robinson in 1837, wrote an inferior poem there, in a rather common metre, in honour of Milton's association with it. [7] 27 April, 1859, the day that the war with Austria was proclaimed. [8] In "A Dictionary of Saintly Women". [9] The position of easel pictures in the Florentine galleries often changes. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wanderer in Florence, by E. V. Lucas