I have met many of your friends whom you will be glad to hear about; to begin with, the Richard Greenoughs, our cousins. We had much to talk about, as we had not seen each other since Paris, when he made that bust of me. They are the most delightful people, so talented in their different ways, and are full of interest in everything which concerns me. She has just published a book called _Mary Magdalene_, which I think is perfectly wonderful. I have made the acquaintance of William Story (the sculptor). He spoke of you and Aunt Maria as his oldest and dearest friends, and therefore claimed the right to call me Lillie. I have not only seen him, but I have been Mrs. Story, Miss Story, and the third story in the Palazzo Barberini, where they live, and I have already counted many times the tiresome one hundred and twenty-two steps which lead to their apartment, and have dined frequently with them in their chilly Roman dining-room. This room is only warmed by the little apparatus which in Rome passes for a stove. It has a thin leg that sticks out of a hole in the side of the house and could warm a flea at a pinch. The hay on the stone floor made the thin carpet warmer to my cold toes, which, in their evening shoes, were away down below zero, but my cold and bare shoulders shivered in this Greenland icy-mountain temperature which belongs to Roman palaces. This was before I was an _habituée_; but after I had become one I wore, like the other jewel-bedecked dames, woolen stockings and fur-lined overshoes. The contrast must be funny, if one could see above board and under board at the same time. The Storys generally have a lion for dinner and for their evening entertainments. My invitations to their dinners always read thus: "Dear Mrs. Moulton,--We are going to have (mentioning the lion) to dinner. Will you not join us, and if you would kindly bring a little music it would be such a," etc. No beating about the bush there! The other evening Miss Hosmer--female rival of Mr. Story in the sculpturing line--was the lion of the occasion, and was three-quarters of an hour late, her excuse being that she was studying the problem of perpetual motion. Mr. Story, who is a wit, said he wished the motion had been perpetuated in a _botta_ (which is Italian for cab). _February 1st._ Last Thursday, at nine o'clock in the morning, a card was brought to my bedroom. Imagine my astonishment when I read the name of Baroness de C----, the wife of the French Ambassador to the Vatican. What could she want at that early hour? I had heard many stories of her absent- mindedness. I thought that nothing less than being very absent-minded, or else the wish to secure my help for some charity concert, could account for this matutinal visit, especially as I knew her so slightly.