“The first time I came here,” the Signora said after a while, “was on the _festa_ of SS. Roch and Sebastian, in the heat of late summertime. That is a great day for Frascati, for these two saints are their protectors against pestilence, which has never visited the city. When, in ’69, the cholera dropped one night on Albano, just round the mountain there a few miles, and struck people dead almost like lightning, and killed them on the road as they fled to other towns, so that many died, perhaps, from fear and horror, having no other illness, none who reached Frascati in health died. The nobility died as well as the low, and the cardinal bishop died at his post taking care of his people. Whole families came to Frascati, the people told me, flying by night along the dark, lonely road, some half-starving; for all the bakers were dead, and there was no bread except what was sent from Rome. The saints they trusted did not refuse to help them. In Frascati they found safety. If any died there, certainly none sickened there. So, of course, the saints were more honored than ever. I sat here and heard the bells all ringing at noon, and the guns firing salutes, and saw the lovely blue wreaths of smoke curl away over the roofs after each salvo. In Italy they do not praise God solely with the organ, but with the timbrel and the lute. Anything that expresses joy and triumph expresses religious joy and triumph, and the artillery and military bands come out with the candles and the crucifix to honor the saint as well as the warrior. Then in the evening there was the grand procession, clergy, church choirs, military bands, crucifixes, banners, women dressed in the ancient costume of the town, and the bells all ringing, the guns all booming, and the route of the procession strewn with fragrant green. The evening deepened as they marched, and their candles, scarcely visible at first, grew brighter as they wound about the steep streets and the illuminated piazzas. All the houses had colored lamps out of their windows, and there were fireworks. But my noon up here impressed me most. My two guides, trusty men, and my only companions, sat contentedly in the shade playing _Morra_ after their frugal bread and wine. Sitting with my back to them, only faintly hearing their voices as they called the numbers, I could imagine that they were Achilles and Ajax, whom you can see on an ancient Etruscan vase in the Vatican playing the same game. The present was quite withdrawn from me. I felt like _Annus Mundi_ looking down on _Annus Domini_, and seeing the whole of it, too. I could have stayed all day, but that hunger admonished me; for I had not been so provident as my guides, nor as I have been to-day. Going down, however, just below the Capuchin convent, I saw a man on a donkey coming up, with a large basket slung at each side of the saddle in front of him. No one could doubt what was under those cool vine-leaves. He was carrying fresh figs up to the