They took the _Calcio_ with them too, just as the English take their football, cricket or tennis. Thus Tommaso Rinuccini, living at Lyons, writes in his memoirs that: “When Henry III., King of Poland, after the death of Charles IX. his brother, left Poland for France in 1575 to take possession of the kingdom, he passed through Lyons in France. And the Florentines living in that city played before him a _Calcio_, in which all the Florentine nobles took part, as it was their custom to do. And they sent Pierantonio Bandini and Pierfrancesco Rinuccini, two extremely handsome gentlemen and tall, both Florentines (who were the standard-bearers in the _Calcio_), to invite his Majesty, in the name of their native city, to be present at the celebration. King Henry accepted the invitation and was a spectator of the game. When he spoke to them before they left his presence he asked whether all Florentines were as tall and handsome as they.” It would be, indeed, well for the physical development of modern Florentines should the _Calcio_ enter again into the ordinary life of the youth of the city. ELBA A MONTH IN ELBA I. AN atmosphere as invisible as that of Egypt, a sea of the clearest amethyst and emerald, merging into sapphire in the distance, and jealously guarded by a series of frowning headlands, now grey, now black, now red, with heart and veins of iron, that enclose miniature beaches and mysterious grottos where the water sleeps peacefully in the arms of its lord; and within, a sea of vines embracing the feet of mountains clothed with pines, with lentisks that have watched the passage of centuries, with bushes of white heather taller than a tall man, with glaucous agaves, rigid and puritanical, with prickly pears, fantastic and repellent; the very air of a voluptuous quality: soft, velvety even, with the mingled odours of an infinite number of aromatic plants and herbs, sweet with the white amaryllis that fringes the sea. Such, in broad outlines, is the island for which Etruscans, Romans, Genoese, Pisans, Saracens, Spanish, French and English have fought, in which Victor Hugo was nursed into life, in which Napoleon was caged; a land of wine and iron, glowing with strength and passion. A land of perfect peace and infinite possibilities does this island seem as one drifts along the coast, watching the fish dart below the keel of the boat, rounding the islets that look as though they had skipped from the mainland in play and were intent on their own reflection in the water; as one swims into grottos purple-roofed, over water of the purest aquamarine, and looks through the narrow opening across the twinkling sea outside; or, as one walks through miles of vineyard in which grow the choicest grapes, or climbs up to the iron quarries, where the mountain is being simply dug away.