“Poor little patient wretches! how they have to suffer,” said the Signora. “Even their outcry, while the most pitiful sound in the world, a very sob of despairing pain, is the height of the ridiculous. If you don’t cry hearing it, you must laugh, unless, indeed, you should be angry. For they sometimes make a ‘situation’ by an inopportune bray, as a few weeks ago at the Arcadia. The Academy was holding an _adunanza_ at Palazzo Altemps, and, as the day was quite warm and the audience large, the windows into the back court were opened. The prose had been read, and a pretty, graceful poetess, the Countess G――――, had recited one of her best poems, when a fine-looking monsignore rose to favor us with a sonnet. He writes and recites enthusiastically, and we prepared to listen with pleasure. He began, and, after the first line, a donkey in the court struck in with the loudest bray I ever heard. Monsignore continued, perfectly inaudible, and the donkey continued, obstreperously audible. A faint ripple of a smile touched the faces least able to control themselves. Monsignore went on with admirable perseverance, but with a somewhat heightened color. A sonnet has but fourteen lines, and the bray had thirteen. They closed simultaneously. Monsignore sat down; I don’t know what the donkey did. One only had been visible, as the other only had been audible. The audience applauded with great warmth and politeness. ‘Who are they applauding,’ asked my companion of me――‘the one they have heard, or the one they have not heard?’ If it had been my sonnet, I should instantly have gone out, bought that donkey, and hired somebody to throw him into the Tiber.” “Here we are at the great _piazza_, and here is the cathedral. See how the people in the shops and fruit-stands water their flowers!” In fact, all the rim of the great fountain-basin was set round with a row of flower-pots containing plants that were dripping in the spray of the falling cascades. Just out of reach of the spray were two fruit shops large enough to contain the day’s store and the chair of the person who sold it. Temporary pipes from the fountain conducted water to the counters, where a tiny fountain tossed its borrowed jet, constantly renewed from the cool cascade, and constantly returning to the basin. “We must take _excelsior_ for our motto,” the Signora said to the two girls, who wanted to stop and admire everything they saw. “We are for the mountain-height now. When we return, you may like to dress up with flowers two shrines on the road. I always do it when I come this way.”