“The Theodoli” was tall and statuesque, her hair was a golden aureole about her head, her eyes fiery brown, her color ivory. It was the fashion to be in love with her. Even after she had children grown, an infatuated boy shot himself for her sake, standing before her portrait in a photographer’s studio. “Monsignor Capel.” Everybody turned to look at the celebrated English prelate, a fine man with “a good leg” very obvious in its long purple stocking, vigorous silver hair, and a silvery voice that somehow does not ring quite true. This was when he was at the height of his popularity, before the affair of the bracelet. Some one asked the conundrum of the hour, “Why is Monsignor Capel like Mme. Récamier?” (The proprietress of a London beauty parlor.) “Because he makes Bute a fool (beautiful) forever.” Lord Bute was the Monsignor’s latest convert among the British aristocracy. “The Minister of the United States.” George Perkins Marsh, first American diplomatic representative to United Italy, was the most important American in Rome, though you would not have guessed it from his quiet manner. He looked the grave scholar he was and he talked with my mother and Crawford of matters philological, on which he was an authority. It was long after that I realized the great part he played in the history of United Italy. Years later Queen Margherita spoke of Mr. Marsh as having been the intimate friend of her father-in-law, Victor Emmanuel, and from others I have learned that he was frequently consulted and gave much help in framing the “Statuto” as the Italian Constitution is called. One keen memory of my first winter in Rome is of a morning spent in the Forum with Crawford and Augustus Hare, who was at work on his incomparable “Hare’s Walks.” He had brought with him a copy of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, and as we sat on the steps of the Basilica Julio, he read aloud Marc Antony’s oration. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!” How the words echoed in that place! My last impression of Augustus Hare is of an evening in the red drawing-room of the Odescalchi, when he told ghost stories till my blood ran cold. He was a slender, sallow man, with a baleful face, and when, in the firelight of the darkened room, he ended a ghastly tale with “A ball of flame broke from his lips!” it seemed as if a ball of fire actually leaped from his! There was something intensely repellent to me about Hare, and of this he was instantly conscious. “Your cousin cannot endure me,” he said to Crawford; “I make her flesh creep. She is telling your sister about it at this moment,”--and I was!