The impression of this view was rendered all the more enchanting by that wonderful colouring, so well known to all who have visited Umbria or Tuscany in the spring. The mountains were nearly always wreathed in an azure mist; the shadows were deep blue, little white cloudlets floated in the turquoise sky; the valley was green under its carpet of velvet grass, powdered already with daisies; the fruit-trees in the orchards were covered with a wealth of pink and white blossom. Such landscapes can be seen only in the pictures of the Italian old masters, for they alone, of all painters, have possessed the gift of reproducing all the softness and harmony of their native colouring. Assisi has, to this day, preserved its character of a mediæval Borgo, and has probably changed but little since the days of St. Francis. An old ruined fortress crowns the higher of a group of hills, and from this point run in all directions narrow, ill-paved little streets, illuminated at night, as in old times, by feeble lanterns hanging on wires stretched across the roadway. Nobody seems to live in the monotonous, grey stone houses with eternally closed shutters; nobody ever seems to walk in the deserted streets and dark alleys. Only an occasional donkey tied to a wall stands meditatively in the middle of the road, and from time to time moves his long ears as a sign of life. Now and then there float across the air from some cellar the beat of a carpenter’s hammer, and the subdued tones of his voice, singing about the “faithless Fiametta.” Life seems to have stopped at the twelfth century, since when everything has lain still in an enchanted sleep. Even the numerous tourists do not succeed in awakening the slumbering town. The inhabitants are mostly monks and nuns, with a scattering of Polish Catholics, and English old maids, who come to kneel at the shrine of St. Francis. Irene set herself zealously to visit all the holy places. First, she descended into the valley, to the Church of Santa Maria dei Angeli. It had once stood in the heart of a dreaming forest, where, in the fourth century, some monks had built a tiny chapel, round which, partly in cells, partly in caves, the brotherhood had settled. In this primitive little settlement, St. Francis lived and prayed and died. Later on his remains were removed and buried in the new and magnificent fortress-like Franciscan Monastery, whose white walls and towers now shine dazzlingly in the sun. The old forest has long since disappeared, and the touching little chapel is almost lost in the centre of the magnificent temple built around it. Monks show visitors round the monastery, pointing out the cell in which St. Francis died, the grotto in which he slept, and the little garden where grew the roses without thorns, that God had sent him as a special grace.