The Storys had a villa in Siena, and my father certainly had in the back part of his mind an idea of settling there, or elsewhere in Italy, now or later; but after ten days we were on our travels again. There were no ruins to be seen, that I remember, but many churches and frescoes and old oil-paintings, which I regarded with indifference. Mediaeval remains did not attract me like classic ones. It was here that Story drew the caricatures which I have already spoken of, and from the windows of the room, as the twilight fell, we could see the great comet, then in its apogee of brilliance. Where will the world be when it comes again? We had rooms at the Aquila Nera, looking out on the venerable, gray Palazzo Tolomei. The narrow streets were full of people; the steepness and irregularity of the thoroughfares of the city produced a feeling of energy and activity in the midst of the ancient historic peace. Siena is, I believe, built about the crater of an extinct volcano. The old brick wall of the city was still extant, running up hill and down, and confining the rusty heaps of houses within its belt. There were projecting balconies, crumbling with age, and irregular arcades, resembling tunnels hewn out of the solid rock. From the windows of our sitting-room in the hotel we commanded the piazza, in front of the Palazzo Tolomei, with a pillar in the midst of it, on which was a group of Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf, the tradition of the city being that it was founded during the epoch of the Roman kings. My mother made a sketch of this monument in her little sketch-book, and my father, according to a common custom of his, sat for an hour at the window one day and made a note of every person who passed through the little square, thus getting an idea of the character of the local population not otherwise obtainable. I can imagine that, were one born in Siena, one might conceive an ardent affection for it; but, in spite of its picturesqueness, it never touched my heart like Rome or Florence, or even London or Paris. I left it without regret, but with specimens of its fossils in my pockets.