San Gimignano must be seen on some day of festa and procession, such as that solemnity of Santa Fina which is kept once in every five years on the first Sunday in August, or, more easily perhaps, on the annual celebration of the _Corpus Domini_. On the afternoon of the vigil of the latter day, the children wander out over the fields of all the country round for miles, returning at nightfall with baskets full of red and yellow flowers (the colours of the Commune), to be scattered in the way on the morrow. Then on the morning of the Festa, after High Mass at the Duomo, the procession passes under the Tower of the Commune, through the streets, between those grim towers, beneath the massive dark portoni, round and round the piazze. First come the various companies and confraternities of the contado with their priests and banners, then the Cappuccini with the gigantic black crucifix, followed by the canons of the Collegiata and, under the baldacchino, the Proposto bearing the Blessed Sacrament. The procession is almost exclusively composed of men and boys, the women and girls contenting themselves with scattering the red and yellow flowers before it as it advances. The crowd follows from place to place, falling down in adoration as the Sacred Host comes past. The bandsmen, the one obtrusive note of municipal modernity, with their uniforms, their white plumes and tricoloured favours, only make themselves evident at intervals, and whatever there may be of tawdriness in the decorations and the finery is lost and transfigured in the glory of the Tuscan early summer. Old Latin hymns, the Church's heritage from the remotest Middle Ages, mingle and harmonise with the clamour of the bells that clashed out a _stormo_ while Guelfs and Ghibellines struggled madly together in these very streets through which the waving banners move to-day, that rang a _gloria_ for the coming of Bishop Ranieri the peacemaker, or were swung to and fro by the hands of invisible Angels when the maiden Fina died. What more would the seeker for fresh sensations in Italy desire? BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX The following short note on Books and Authorities is not intended as a complete bibliography, but simply as a guide to further information upon the subjects dealt with in the present volume, and upon others which the limited space at my disposal has compelled me to treat somewhat cursorily and summarily. _A._--HISTORY. Orlando Malavolti, _Historia de' Fatti e Guerre dei Senesi, così esterne come civili, seguite dall' origine della lor Città, fino all' anno_ M.D. LV. Venice, 1599. Giovanni Antonio Pecci, _Memorie storico-critiche della Città di Siena_. Four volumes. Siena, 1755-1760. Taking its start from _La vita civile di Pandolfo Petrucci_, this work tells the whole history of Siena from 1480 to 1559.