Palfy, too, remembered Rome in the old days, when the long drive along the Riviera in an old-fashioned travelling carriage (before railways were known in these parts) was a thing planned and arranged months beforehand--one such journey was made in a life-time. He said the little villages where they stopped were something awful; not the slightest idea of modern comfort or cleanliness. The ladies travelled with a retinue of servants, taking with them sheets, mattresses, washing materials (there was a large heavy silver basin and jug which always travelled with his family) and batterie de cuisine; also very often a doctor, as one was afraid of fever or a bad chill, as of course any heating apparatus was most primitive. The Italians sat in the sun all day and went to bed when it was dark and cold. One saw the country and the people much better in that way. Now we fly through at night in an express train, and the Rome we see to-day might be Paris, Vienna, or any modern capital. I mean, of course, inside the walls. As soon as one gets out of the gates and on the Campagna one feels as if by instinct all the dead past of the great city. I told them that in our time, when we lived one summer in the Villa Marconi at Frascati, the arrangements were most primitive. The palace was supposed to be furnished, but as the furniture consisted chiefly of marble statues, benches, and baths--also a raised garden on a level with the upper rooms, opening out of the music-room, the door behind an enormous white marble statue of some mythological celebrity--it didn't seem very habitable to our practical American minds. There were beds and one or two wash-stands, also curtains in one room, but as for certain intimate domestic arrangements they didn't exist; and when we ventured to suggest that they were indispensable to our comfort we were told, "I principi romani non domandono altro" (Roman princes don't ask for anything more).