[Sidenote: At Ravenna.] "I have found Constantinople again at San Vitale[519] and San Apollinare[520]. Honorius[521] and his hen were indifferent to me; I prefer Placidia[522] and her adventures, the memory of which came back to me in the basilica of St. John the Baptist: they form the romance of the Barbarians. Theodoric[523] remains great, even though he put Boethius[524] to death. Those Goths were a superior race; Amalasontha[525], banished to an island in the Lake of Bolsena, strove, with her minister Cassiodorus[526], to save what remained of Roman civilization. The Exarchs[527] brought to Ravenna the decadence of their empire. Ravenna was Lombard under Astolf[528]; the Carlovingians restored it to Rome. It became subject to its archbishop; then it changed from a republic into a tyranny; finally, after having been Guelph or Ghibelline, after having formed part of the Venetian States, it returned to the Church[529] under Pope Julius II.[530] and lives to-day only through the name of Dante. "This city, which Rome bore in her advanced age, had, from its birth, something of the old age of its mother. Upon the whole, I should not mind living here; I should like to go to the French Column, raised in memory of the Battle of Ravenna. There were the Cardinal de Medici[531] and Ariosto[532], Bayard[533] and Lautrec, brother to the Comtesse de Chateaubriand. There the handsome Gaston de Foix[534] was killed at the age of twenty-four. "'Notwithstanding all the artillery fired by the Spaniards,' says the _Loyal Serviteur_, 'the French marched on; never since God created Heaven and earth was a crueller nor fiercer assault between French and Spaniards. They rested in front of one another to recover their breath; then, lowering their visors, began again worse than ever, crying "France!" and "Spain!'" "Of all those warriors there remained but a few knights who then, become freed-men of glory, put on the frock. "One saw also in some cabin a young girl who, in turning her spindle, caught her dainty fingers in the hemp; she was not accustomed to that life: she was a Trivulzis. When, through her half-open door, she saw two billows join each other on the bosom of the waters, she felt her sadness increase: that woman had been beloved by a great king. She continued to go slowly, by a lonely way, from her cabin to an abandoned church and from the church to her cabin. "The old forest through which I passed was composed of solitary pines: they resembled the masts of galleys settled in the sand. The sun was near its setting when I left Ravenna; I heard the distant sound of a bell tolling: it was summoning the faithful to prayer." [Sidenote: Ancona.] "ANCONA, 3 and 4 _October._