You will conceive whether or not, during the months that followed, I was an assiduous visitor at the Palazzo Zacchinelli. But I couldn’t spend all my time there, and in my enforced absences I needed consolation. I imagine I treated Aunt Elizabeth’s advice about avoiding bad company as youth is wont to treat the counsels of crabbed age. Doubtless my most frequent associates were those very painters and Bohemians against whom she had particularly cautioned me—whether they were also republicans and atheists, I don’t think I ever knew; I can’t remember that I inquired, and religion and politics were subjects they seldom touched upon spontaneously. I dare say I joined the artists’ club, in the Via Margutta, the Circolo Internazionale degli Artisti; I am afraid the Caffe Greco was my favourite café; I am afraid I even bought a wide-awake hat, and wore it on the back of my head, and tried to look as much like a painter and Bohemian myself as nature would permit. Bad company? I don’t know. It seemed to me very good company indeed. There was Jack Everett, tall and slim and athletic, with his eager aquiline face, his dark curling hair, the most poetic-looking creature, humorous, whimsical, melancholy, imaginative, who used to quote Byron, and plan our best practical jokes, and do the loveliest little cupids and roses in water-colours. He has since married the girl he was even then in love with, and is still living in Rome, and painting cupids and roses. And there was d’.vignac, le vicomte, a young Frenchman, who had been in the Diplomatic Service, and—superlative distinction!—“ruined himself for a woman,” and now was striving to keep body and soul together by giving fencing lessons; witty, kindly, pathetic d’.vignac—we have vanished altogether from each other’s ken. There was Ulysse Tavoni, the musician, who, when somebody asked him what instrument he played, answered cheerily, “All instruments.” I can testify from personal observation that he played the piano and the flute, the guitar, mandoline, fiddle, and French horn, the ’cello and the zither. And there was Kônig, the Austrian sculptor, a tiny man with a ferocious black moustache, whom my landlady (he having called upon me one day when I was out), unable to remember his transalpine name, described to perfection as “un Orlando Furioso—ma molto piccolo.” There was a dear, dreamy, languid, sentimental Pole, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, also a sculptor, whose name I have totally forgotten, though we were sworn to “hearts’ brotherhood,” He had the most astonishing talent for imitating the sounds of animals, the neighing of a horse, the crowing of a cock; and when he brayed like a donkey, all the donkeys within earshot were deceived, and answered him. And then there was Father Flynn, a jolly old bibulous priest from Cork. An uncle of his had fought at Waterloo; it was great to hear him tell of his uncle’s part in the fortunes of the day. It was great, too (for Father