My letters of recommendation soon brought the heads of the order about me, fair round figures, such as a Chinese would have placed in his pagoda. I could willingly have dispensed with their attention; yet to avoid this was scarcely within the circle of possibility. All dinner we endured the silliest questions imaginable; but that despatched, away flew your humble servant to the fields and forests. The fathers made a shift to waddle after, as fast and as complaisantly as they were able, but were soon distanced. Now, I found myself at liberty, and ran up a narrow path overhung by rock, with bushy chestnuts starting from the crevices. This led me into wild glens of beech trees, mostly decayed and covered with moss: several were fallen. It was amongst these the holy hermit Gualbertus had his cell. I rested a moment upon one of their huge branches, listening to the roar of a waterfall which the wood concealed; then springing up, I clambered over crags and fragments, guided by the sound, and presently discovered a full stream, precipitating itself down a cliff of pine, amongst which I remained several minutes, watching the fallen floods; till, tired with their endless succession, I plunged into the thickest of the grove. A beech received me, like a second Gualbertus, in its hollow trunk. The dry leaves chased each other down the steeps on the edge of the torrents with hollow rustlings, whilst the solemn wave of the forests above exactly answered the idea I had formed of Valombrosa, “ . . . where th’ Etrurian shades High overarch’t imbowr.” The scene was beginning to take effect, and the genius of Milton to move across his favourite valley, when the fathers arrived puffing and blowing, by an easier ascent than I knew of. Pardon me, if I cursed their intrusion, and wished them as still as Gualbertus. “You have missed the way,” cried the youngest; “the hermitage, with the fine picture by Andrea del Sarto, which all the English admire, is on the opposite side of the wood: there don’t you see it on the point of the cliff?” “Yes, yes,” said I a little peevishly; “I wonder the devil has not pushed it down long ago; it seems to invite his kick.” “Satan,” answered the old Pagod very dryly, “is full of malice; but whoever drinks of a spring which the Lord causeth to flow near the hermitage is freed from his illusions.” “Are they so?” replied I with a sanctified accent; “then prithee conduct me thither, for I have great need of such salutary waters, being troubled with strange fancies and imaginations, such as the evil one himself ought to be ashamed of inspiring.” The youngest father shook his head, as much as to say, “This is nothing more than a heretic’s whim.”