In preparation for Italy, Madame Marcombes was making for them all kinds of new linen; and Marcombes bought for them three suits of clothes apiece, and they were to have more when they reached Florence—“where I doe intend to keep them a coach, God willing.” Marcombes was anxious that the Earl should obtain for them a letter (in Latin) from the King, “to all Kings, Princes, Magistrates,” etc., in which Marcombes himself should be named “by name and surname.” And they ought also, he said, to have a special licence from the King to allow them to travel in Rome, “least your Lordship or your sons should be questioned hereafter.” The Genevan household were up in arms against Tom Killigrew, who had gone home and reported, most untruly, that Marcombes was keeping the boys short of clothes and pocket money. In July 1641 Robyn wrote again to his father. The Earl seems to have been still angry with “my brother and I”:—“My most honoured Lord and father, I desire with passion and without any question to go into Italy, but I protest unto your Lordship that I doe not desire it half so much as to heare from your Lp; for the three moneths (or Thereabouts) that we have been deprived of that sweet communication seem to me 3 long Ages, and would to god that the interruption of that pleasing commerce may proceede from your private and publique employments.” Marcombes also had written to the Earl of Cork. He dared not be so bold, he said, as to beg for some news of “yᵉ affaires of yᵉ Island.” They, in Geneva, had heard of Strafford’s death, “yᵉ catastrophe of yᵉ last Deputy of Ireland”; but they did not know who was his successor,[90] or what had become of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of “yᵉ armys both of England and Scotland.” In Geneva, by the grace of God, they were enjoying a profound peace: “yᵉ storme having been driving another way.” It was September 1641 when the boys and their governour, all “well horsed”, bade good-bye to Madame and the children, and set off on their long-talked-of Italian journey. Once more they crossed the “hideous mountains”; they saw the source of the Rhine “but a brook,” and came down in the valley of Valtollina, a little earthly paradise abounding “with all that Ceres and Bacchus are able to present.” Robert Boyle always remembered standing on the spot where the little town of Piur, “once esteemed for its deliciousness,” had about a quarter of a century before been suddenly submerged and buried so deep that “no after search by digging has ever prevailed to reach it.” And still among the Alps, but surrounded by higher mountains, “where store of crystal is digged,” and which “like perpetual penitents do all the year wear white,” the boy found himself, for the first time in his life, _above the clouds_. He never forgot how, as they descended _la Montagna di Morbegno_, he looked down on the clouds that darkened the middle of the mountain below them, while he and his companions were above, in “clear serenity.”