The first four months were spent at Rome, in this gradual opening of his mind to the new impressions of the city, so fascinating to his imagination, and in establishing himself and his family in the new society of their daily life. Late in May, 1858, they went north by the carriage road, and settled at Florence in the Casa Bella, near Casa Guidi, where the Brownings were, and not far from Powers's studio. In August they took possession of the old villa of MontaŁto on the hill of Bellosguardo, near the city, which is so closely associated with Hawthorne's Italian days as the tower of Monte Beni. Here he began to write "The Marble Faun," shutting himself up for an hour or two every day in the stern effort, as he describes it, of coming "to close grip with a romance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind." The scene of his labors was quite remote, such a place as he liked to have to write in, and he was undisturbed unless it were by the Spiritualism of the Browning villa, where Mrs. Browning was a believer; and, perhaps under the influence of this association, Mrs. Hawthorne showed more plainly her natural inclination to a more than curious interest in the phenomena. She was, indeed, somewhat a believer in the power of communication with the spiritual world, and its near presence and influence in our lives. The seclusion of the villa of MontaŁto was very grateful to Hawthorne, and he writes of it to Fields with almost a home-feeling, as if he had again found a lodging place at least for his wandering Penates:-- "It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really away from America--a satisfaction that I never really enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was gradually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. But here in Florence, and in the summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I have escaped out of all my old tracks, and am really remote. I like my present residence immensely. The house stands on a hill, overlooking Florence, and is big enough to quarter a regiment, insomuch that each member of the family, including servants, has a separate suite of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of upper rooms into which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions. At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower, haunted by owls and by the ghost of a monk who was confined there in the thirteenth century, previous to being burnt at the stake in the principal square of Florence. I hire this villa, tower and all, at twenty-eight dollars a month; but I mean to take it away bodily and clap it into a romance, which I have in my head, ready to be written out."