It was warm in Rome. The English had fled. The Romans, pure blood, once more wandered toward sunset--not after it--on the Pincian Hill, and trod with solid step the gravel of _Il Pincio Liberato_. In the Spanish square around the fountain called Barcaccia, the lemonaders are encamped; a hint of lemon, a supposition of sugar, a certainty of water--what more can one expect for a baioccho? From midday until three o'clock in the afternoon, scarcely a place of business, store or shop, is open in Rome. The inhabitants are sleeping, clad as Monsieur Dubufe conceived the original Paradisians should be clad. At sunset, as you turn down the Via Condotti, you see chairs and tables placed outside the Cafe Greco for its frequenters. The interior rooms are too, too close. Even that penetralia, the 'Omnibus,' can not compare with the unwalled room outside, with its star-gemmed ceiling, and the cool breeze eddying away the segar-smoke; so its usual occupants are all outside. At one of these tables sat Caper, Rocjean, and their mutual friend, Dexter--an animal painter--the three in council, discussing the question: 'Where shall we go this summer?' Rocjean strongly advocated the cause of a little town in the Volscian mountains, called Segni, assuring his friends that two artists of the French Academy had discovered it the summer before. 'And they told me,' he said, 'that they would have lived there until this time if they had had it in their power. Not that the scenery around there was any better, if so good, as at Subiaco, or even Gennezzano; but the wine was very cheap, and the cost of boarding at the _locanda_ was only forty baiocchi a day----' 'We will go, we will go!' chimed in Caper. 'There were festivals in some of the neighboring towns nearly every week, and costumes----' 'Let us travel there,' said Caper, 'at once!' 'Horses were to be had for a song----' 'I am ready to sing,' remarked Dexter. 'There was good shooting; _beccafichi_, woodcock, and quails, also red-legged partridges----' 'Say no more,' spoke Caper, 'but let us secure seats in the next stage that starts for such game scenes--immediately!' * * * * * Matters were so well arranged by Rocjean, that three days after the above conversation, the three artists, with passports properly viseed, were waiting, toward sunset, in the Piazza Pollajuolo, for the time not advertised, but spoken of, by the _vetturino_ Francesco as his hour for starting for Segni.