After an hour I was dismissed and went down to the pension, where everything was clean; the air was beautiful, the supper delicious, though simple. They were going to build a larger pension. I never heard nightingales sing more beautifully. Mattei had a nephew and niece living with him, the governess, and six servants. His life passes in building and improving this château, and his medicinal studies. He is awfully good to the poor, and gives them advice, medicine gratis, and money. After dinner I had a long talk with Mrs. Schmidt, who carries out his directions, with great knowledge and tact. She enlightened me a great deal about my health and his remedies, and gave me a hint not to mention fees, or he would never speak to me again; and so, of course, I was careful not to look at my hotel or medicine bill, except the total. The next morning I got up at five, and, with a strong horse and little cart, Blanche and I went up an awful breakneck road to a crag as high again as Mattei's castle, where was a solitary little country chapel. We asked to have Mass and Communion, as it was the first Friday in the month. A priest like an old family picture came out and said Mass and gave us Communion, and we scrambled down again by half-past nine for coffee at the pension. I then set off to have a second consultation with Mattei. This time the dog sat at my feet. And then he called his governess to show me over the castle. (Doré with a bad nightmare would be nothing to it.) It was grand, bold, splendid, and reckless; but the beds were marble--æsthetic biers--with classic garlands of flowers in marble vases on marble tables; the furniture a marble bench. Think of it in winter. There were drawbridges with bolts everywhere--the bedroom doors drawn up at night, showing black bottomless pits in the rock, into which a would-be assassin would fall. The look-out was splendid, wild and eerie. When I saw the mad allegories on the wall in fresco, I said, "Is it right to take medicine from such a lunatic? And yet he has cured hundreds and thousands, so I suppose I may."