We made the regular Sunday turn in the afternoon--Villa Borghese and Pincio--sent the carriage away and walked home by the Villa Medici. W. loves the view from the terrace. We met Mrs. Bruce, also looking at the view, and walked home together. She told W. Cardinal Howard wanted to see him, had known him in England in the old days, also a young English monsignore--called _English_ oddly enough. She will ask us all to dine together some night next week. I asked her if she remembered her famous dinner long ago with Cardinal Howard and Dean Stanley. The two divines were very anxious to cross swords. They were such a contrast. Dean Stanley, small, slight, nervous, bright eyes, charming manners, and a keen debater. The Cardinal, tall, large, slow, but very earnest, absolutely convinced. The conversation was most interesting--very animated--but never personal nor even vehement, though their views and judgments were absolutely different on all points. However, both were gentlemen and both large-minded. W. was much interested, as he knew Dean Stanley and his wife Lady Augusta well; they came often to Paris, and were habitués of Madame Mohl's famous salon, where the literary men of all creeds and countries used to meet. It was there, too, that Dean Stanley and Renan used to meet and talk, the two great intellects finding points in common. I was taken there once or twice after I was first married. It was a curious interior; Madame Mohl, a little old lady, always dressed in white, with a group of men standing around her chair--many more men than women, and never more than twenty or thirty people. I suppose it was the type of the old French literary salon where people went to talk. I naturally listened in those days, not being sufficiently up in all the political and literary questions, and not pinning my faith absolutely on the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Mrs. Bruce, too, was often at Madame Mohl's. We stopped in a few minutes at the Trinità de' Monti, where there was a service of some kind going on. The nuns were singing a low, monotonous chant behind their grating; the church was quite dark, lights only on the altar, a few women kneeling and absorbed, and a few irreverent forestieri looking about and talking in whispers. We came down the Spanish Steps, which were quite deserted at that hour--models, beggars, flâneurs, all resting from their labours.