Saint Philip had entered the room a moment after little Paolo M⸺ had breathed his last, and had found the parents sobbing with grief and despair over the body of their beloved boy. Touched by their sorrow, the Saint had commanded the departed one to arise, upon which Paolo had immediately come back to life. “Why have you brought me back to earth?” he had asked his parents, in tones of reproach. “I was so happy _there_!” Struck by these words, the parents had prayed Saint Philip to let Paolo die again, and the Saint, with a wave of his hand, had released the innocent young soul, that it might fly back to a happier world. This miracle had been performed on a 16th of March, and, to the present day, the top floor of the palazzo, with the chapel in which the remains of Saint Philip repose, is thrown open every year on that date to the people of Rome. In an unbroken stream the neighbouring poor with their little children, monks and nuns, as well as the inevitable tourists, ascend and descend the splendid staircase. The entrance to the palace is decorated for the occasion with flags and brightly-coloured draperies. In the doorway stands a servant in gold-embroidered uniform, the courtyard is crowded, and heads peep from all the little windows of the third floor. The rooms leading to the chapel are low, with wood-panelled ceilings, narrow windows, and furniture of the Middle Ages. The chapel itself is brilliantly illuminated. Women, one after another, fall on their knees and pray fervently. This is a children’s festival, particularly dear to mothers. Monks and nuns repeat the legend in detail to the assembled crowd, the Roman poor listening reverently and with emotion, the tourists looking on with mocking smiles. On the same day, in the great reception rooms below, the princely M⸺ family receives its friends, from four to seven. The family is of ancient and historic lineage, tracing its origin back to pre-Christian Rome. Like all the rest of the Roman aristocracy the princes are religious Catholics, firm in their allegiance to the Vatican. Irene’s gaze wandered in mute admiration round the enormous entrance-hall, with its magnificent painted ceiling, its antique statues, and the crimson baldaquin at one of its walls. Only the most ancient families in Rome possess such a baldaquin. Under it stands the chair reserved in old days for the use of the Pope, who frequently honoured noble Romans with his visits. Across the balustrade surrounding this throne, footmen, in most wonderful blue and cerise liveries, were laying the wraps of arriving visitors, to whom at the same time a house-steward in black dress clothes and a heavy chain was handing a visitors’ book for signature. Beyond the hall could be seen long enfilades of rooms, with magnificent tapestries, pictures, statues, and many other ancient treasures of art not to be met with elsewhere. Irene particularly noticed a jewel-case in the shape of a girl’s figure carved in wood, and coloured.