We decided to go home through the Villa Ruffinella. Donkeys are not allowed inside, and we thought probably not horses either, but the carabinieri came in and showed us the way down. The grounds are splendid--we walked first down through a beautiful green allée, then up, a good climb. The villa is enormous--uninhabited and uncared for--a charming garden and great terrace with stone benches before the house looking toward Rome. The garden, of course, wild and ragged, but with splendid possibilities. Just outside the gate we came upon a little church. Three or four girls and women with bright-coloured skirts and fichus and quantities of coarse jet-black hair were sitting on the steps working at what looked like coarse crochet work and talking hard. The carabinieri were always near, opened two or three gates for us, and only left us when we were quite close to the town, well past the gates of the Aldobrandini Villa. As we had some little time before the train started, I went off with Bessie to have a look at Palazzo Marconi. It is now occupied by the municipio and quite changed. We found a youth downstairs who couldn't imagine what we wanted and why we wanted to go up; however, I explained that I had lived there many years ago, so finally he agreed to go up with us. The steps looked more worn and dirty--quite broken in some places--and the frescoes on the walls, which were bright blue and green in our time, are almost effaced. It was all so familiar and yet so changed. I went into father's room and opened the window on the terrace, where we had stood so often those hot August nights, watching the mist rise over the Campagna and the moon over the sea. There was very little furniture anywhere--a few chairs and couches in the small salon that we had made comfortable enough with our own furniture from Rome. The great round room with the marble statues has been turned into a salle de conseil, with a big writing-table in the middle, and chairs ranged in a semicircle around the room. There was nothing at all in our old bed-rooms--piles of cartons in one corner. The marble bath-tub was black and grimy. We couldn't see the dining-room, people were in it, but we went out to the hanging-garden--all weeds, and clothes hanging out to dry. The fountain was going at the back of the court, but covered with moss, and bits of stone were dropping off. It all looked very miserable--I don't think I shall ever care to go back. There seemed just the same groups of idle men standing about as in our time--dozens of them doing nothing, hanging over the wall looking at the people come up from the railway station. They tell me they never work; even when they own little lots of land or vignas they don't work themselves--the peasants from the Abruzzi come down at stated seasons, dig and plant and do all the work. One can't understand it, for they look a tall, fine race, all these peasants of the Castelli Romani, strong, well-fed, broad-shouldered.