My sister and I stayed on, and, very often, in the evenings, did Colonel Tellenbach come beside us to sigh over the loss of _ces charmantes dames anglaises_! We had, of course, determined that our first sight of the Colosseum should be by moonlight, so, that, on the first brilliant night when all could go, we started—fourteen ladies in a procession of five of the nice little Roman victorias. None of the gentlemen were free to act as protectors, so we made up in quantity for lack of quality. It must be confessed that some of us could have entered sympathetically into the feelings of the rank-and-file of a forlorn hope. Malaria and brigands seemed to us to lurk in every deep dark corner of the vast ruin, and we did not know what might be the perils of the way thither. But our leader had our confidence, and we followed, to find the streets of Rome as quiet as those of an English village, and in the ruins nothing more than groups of tourists of all nations. Still, our experience made us fully appreciate a story which was going the round at the time. A solitary Englishman, wandering in the ruins, was roused to suspicion by the number of times he came across the same burly, brown-frocked, cowled monk, who finally jostled against him, turning suspicion into certainty. The Englishman felt at once for his watch. It was not there! He strode after the monk, overmatching him in height if not in breadth, and, seizing him by the throat, demanded his watch. A colloquy, unintelligible on either side, ended in the monk giving up the watch; and, with a parting shake that sent him sprawling, the irate Englishman stalked off to tell his wife the tale. “But your watch is on the dressing-table!” she said, in alarm. He pulled out the watch in his pocket. _It was not his own._ A veil falls over the scene. But the early express next morning took away two passengers who were not likely soon to re-visit the Eternal City. Nothing marred our own complete enjoyment of the scene as we sat for some time in the moonlight, opposite the imperial seat, trying to bring back the past, to see the cruel Roman crowd, to picture the stately Vestals with their power of life and death. And most clearly of all we seemed to see the Monk Telemachus as he sprang into the arena, the last human sacrifice to Roman lust of blood. Miss Findon tells of similar experience— “Once, as we sat in the Colosseum, Miss Buss read us Byron’s lines and also Dickens’ words about it. I remember the tones of her voice now as she ended:—‘God be thanked—a ruin!’ And then paused while we tried to carry our minds back to that old time when under that same blue sky, this ruin had been the scene of those terrible fights of men and beasts, and the Roman ladies looked on. How different from the tender heart of her who was sitting in our midst!”