Though there was some discussion of political matters at my aunt’s house, it appeared to me that the two serious things in life from the Palazzo Odescalchi standpoint were society with a small s, and art with a big A. Quick as a chameleon to take the local color, I entered the studio of Giovanni Costa to study painting. Costa, one of the young artists among the immortal _Mille_ who sailed from Sicily with Garibaldi and made the great fight for Italian liberty, was the most interesting painter in Rome, with a large following among English and Americans. In order to be in time for his class I often stole away before breakfast to the studio in the Via Margutta, taking a roll in my pocket. I enjoyed my work and made some progress, learning how to prepare my canvas and lay on the under color in pale red in a way that satisfied my master. I was toiling over a study of a branch of lemons when my artistic career was interrupted by a severe attack of Roman fever, a scourge which then took its toll every year from the Americans wintering in Rome. Two new figures now appear in “Memory’s Showcase”, Doctor Liberali, the old homeopathic physician, and Suora Teresa, the Spanish nun who nursed me. Oh, the horrors of those long, sleepless nights when I lay staring at the shadows cast by the taper on the painted ceiling, waiting for the first faint gray, for the song of the caged bird outside the opposite window, for the moment when that casement would open and I could see the profile of a young monk in a white habit bending over the bird cage. At long last came a welcome tap at my door and Mariuccia, the merry little maid, tiptoed to my side with a cheery: “_Buon Giorno, Signorina._ It will go better to-day. I made a petition for you at mass.” Relapse followed relapse. The doctor grew graver, the Suora more careful, my mother paler. “The girl will never recover in this room. She must have sun; she must have fire!” I heard the doctor declare to my aunt. “It is the truth!” murmured the Sister. My beautiful Nile-green room was deadly cold; the only heat it ever knew came from a charcoal brazier whose fumes gave me such a headache that I preferred the cold. A few hours later my bed was carried into one of the sunny south drawing-rooms, where an open fire blazed upon the hearth. I was too much absorbed in the fight for life that followed to think much of the trouble I was giving; since then I have grilled in my blood at the memory of that upsetting of the well-ordered existence at the Palazzo Odescalchi. The splendid sunny reception and living rooms opened _en suite_, one from the other; what happened on the Wednesday afternoon receptions and the more intimate Sunday evenings at home?