adding small bits of clay. Sitting for my bust made me sleepy, and I waited impatiently when Romanelli, who was careful not to overtire me, would tell me to have a rest. Then I rose and went out into the garden, stiff with long sitting. I yawned and stretched my arms wearily and five minutes after I resumed my place on the “dais.” When the turn came for my neck to be modelled, Romanelli told me to unbutton the upper part of my bodice, which made me burn with shame. The old sculptor laughed and said that he had lost the number of all the necks, a great deal more low-bodied than mine, which had served for models to him during his long artistic life. My bust advanced rapidly and the likeness was perfect, but Sergy, who had only too flattering an opinion of me in every way, and was very hard to please according to what concerned my precious person, found that the head was not well put on, and the back not sufficiently straight, and when Romanelli agreeably to his demands, began to take off layers of clay from my bust’s back, Sergy turned away shuddering: it seemed to him as if I was being carved alive. Romanelli declared finally that the head had to be separated from the bust in order to place it more backwards; my husband would not consent to be present at this bloodless operation and carried me away promptly, when we returned an hour later, we found the head in its proper place again. My bust in clay was now completed and Romanelli promised to send to Moscow for Christmas my bust made in marble. The lump of clay representing the bust of a young woman, which Romanelli manipulated according to my features, is transformed now, for another sitting, into a bust of a wrinkled old man. My portrait will be ready for Christmas also. CHAPTER XXXIV ROME We spent a week in visiting the city of the Cæsars, running through churches, art-galleries and other regulation sights, according to Baedecker, from morning till night. We followed our guide with uncomplaining stoicism from one Museum to another. I was not feeling altogether at my ease when visiting the catacombs, and wished myself anywhere else all the time. We had to come down slowly through dark stone passages with our folding lantern in which a reluctant wax-taper went out at regular intervals. We saw caverns containing skeletons which fell to dust when you touched them, and petrified corpses in coffins under a glass cover. Truly it was a ghastly sight! There are often crumbling stones too in the Catacombs, and you can easily find your death under them.