We were completely carried away by Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper." We found it in a large hall which the Austrian soldiers had used as a stable and they had cut a door--Horrors! Abomination of abominations!--in the central panel of the picture. The masterpiece is gradually fading away. In time it will have entirely disappeared, but it is not like "La Giaconda" easier to carry away than the wall thirty feet high on which it is painted. We went through Verona and made the obligatory pilgrimage to the tomb of Juliet, the beloved of Romeo. That excursion satisfies the inmost feelings of every young man in love with Love. Then Vienza, Padua, where, while I was looking at Giotto's paintings on the story of Christ, I had an intuition that Mary Magdalene would occupy my life some day, and then Venice! Venice! One might have told me that I still lived although I would not have believed it, so unreal were the hours I passed in that matchless city. As we had no Baedeker--his guide was too costly for us--it was only through a sort of divination that we discovered all the wonders of Venice without directions. My companions admired a painting by Palma Vecchio in a church whose name they did not know. How was I to find it among the ninety churches in Venice? I got into my gondola alone and said to my "barcaiollo" that I was going to Saint Zacharie; but I did not find the picture, a Santa Barbara, so I had him take me to another saint. A new deception! As this kept repeating and threatened never to end, my gondolier laughingly showed me another church--All Saints--and said to me, mockingly, "Go in there; you'll surely find yours." I pass over Pisa and Florence which I shall describe in detail later. When we came near the Papal territory, we decided to add a picturesque touch to our journey and instead of entering Rome in the conventional way by Ponte-Moll, the ancient witness of the defeat of Maxentius and the glorification of Christianity, we took a steamer from Leghorn to Civitta Vecchia. It was the first sea voyage that I went through ... almost decently, thanks to some oranges which I kept in my mouth all the time. At last we reached Rome by the railroad from Civitta Vecchia to the Eternal City. It was the pensionnaires' dinner hour and they were nonplussed at seeing us, for we had deprived them of a holiday in going to meet our coach on the Flammian Way. Our welcome was spontaneous. A special dinner was hastily got together and this started the jokes practised on newcomers, who were called "_Les Affreux Nouveaux_." As a musician I was instructed to go bell in hand to call dinner through the numerous walks of the Villa Medici, now plunged in darkness. As I did not know the way, I fell into a fountain. Naturally the bell stopped ringing and the boarders, who were listening to the sound and rejoicing in the fun, burst into hearty laughter at the sudden cessation of the noise. They understood what had happened and came to fish me out.