"Returning to Forli, I left it once again without having seen on its crumbling ramparts the place where the Duchess Caterina Sforza[535] declared to her enemies, who were preparing to murder her only son, that she could still be a mother. Pius VII., born at Cesena, was a monk in the admirable convent of Madonna del Monte. "Near Savignano, I passed across the ravine of a little torrent: when I was told that I had crossed the Rubicon, it seemed to me as though a curtain was raised and that I saw the land of Cæsar's time. My own Rubicon is life: it is long since I cleared its first bank. "At Rimini, I met neither Francesca nor the other shade, her companion, ‘ who seemed so light before the wind:' E paion si al vento esser leggieri[536]. "Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia have brought me to Ancona over roads and bridges left by the Augustuses. In Ancona they are to-day keeping the Pope's[537] birthday; I hear the music from Trajan's[538] triumphal arch: a double sovereignty of the Eternal City." "LORETTO, 5 and 6 _October._ "We have come to sleep at Loretto. The territory offers a perfectly-preserved specimen of the Roman _colonia._ The peasant farmers of Our Lady are in easy circumstances and seem happy; the peasant-women, handsome and gay, wear a flower in their hair. The Prelate Governor gave us his hospitality. From the top of the steeple and the summit of some of the eminences of the city one enjoys smiling vistas over the plains, Ancona and the sea. In the evening we had a storm. I took pleasure in watching the _valentia muralis_ and the fumitory beloved by the goats bow before the wind on the old walls. I walked under the double galleries erected after Bramante's[539] designs. Those pavements will be beaten by the autumn rains, those blades of grass will shiver at the breath of the Adriatic long after I shall have passed away.