A great many little children were coming with the older people to look at all this, and talking, in their pretty Italian tongue, about the "Bambino." Epiphany, as perhaps you know, is the day kept in memory of the visit of the Wise Men where the Star in the East guided to our Saviour's cradle. On that day, Il Santissimo Bambino was to be carried with all ceremony back to the Sacristy; so we went to see that. We were glad to find the Blessed Virgin had two nice silk dresses; she had changed from blue to red, and the Bambino was standing on her knee. The Shepherds had gone, and the Wise Men had come, all very gorgeous in flowered brocade and cloth of gold, with crowns on their heads, and pages to hold their trains. It was yet an hour or two before the "Procession of the Bambino" would proceed; so we went out of the side door of the church to stray about the Capitoline Hill in the meanwhile. We went down the steps where Tiberias Gracchus, the friend of the people, was killed, some two thousand years ago. That brought us into a small square called Piazza di Campidoglio. It is surrounded on three sides by public buildings, and in front has a grand stairway leading down to the street. It was in this very spot that Brutus made his famous speech after the assassination of Julius Cæsar. We crossed the square, went up some steps and through an archway. A company of little Romans were playing soldier there, and the small drum-major made the walls of the capitol resound with his rattling music. That reminds me to tell you that Santa Claus does not visit Italy; but an old woman, named Navona, comes instead. She may be his wife, for aught I know; in fact, it seems quite likely, for she has a way, just like his, of coming down the chimney, bringing gifts for the good children and switches for the naughty. These must have been very good little boys, for every one of them seemed to have a new sword or gun. Probably Navona has to keep the house while Santa Claus is away about his Christmas business, and that is the reason she does not reach her small people here until the night before Epiphany, the 6th of January. We went down a lane of poor houses, dodging the clothes which hung drying over our heads, and came to a large green gate in the high stone wall of a garden. We knocked, but no one answered. Presently a black-eyed little boy came running to us, glad to earn two or three sous by going to call the _custode_. While we wait for him to do so, I must tell you why we wished to go through this green door. You have read, either in Latin or English, the story of Tarpæia, the Roman maiden, who consented to show the Latin soldiers the way into the citadel if they would give her what they wore on their left arms, meaning their bracelets, and then the grim joke they played after she had done her part, by throwing upon her their shields, which were also "what they wore on their left arms."