When we arose to go, His Holiness escorted us to the door and bowed us out with a kindly smile in his fine young eyes that I shall never forget.

Shortly after this I left Rome. It was getting hot and my husband persuaded me to take the children away, promising to join us for a short breath of mountain air before he sailed for Manila. It had been decided that I should remain in Europe for a month or so and I was to choose the place best suited for recuperation. I went first to Florence for a week, then to the Grande Albergo Castello de Aquabella at Vallombrosa. The sonorous name of this hotel should have been a sufficient warning to me of the expense of living there, but I was not in a mood to anticipate any kind of unpleasant experience.

It is a beautiful place reached by a funicular railway from a station about fifteen miles from Florence, and is where Milton wrote parts of Paradise Lost . The hotel was an old castle remodelled, and as we were almost the only guests and were attended by relays of most obsequious servants we managed to feel quite baronial. We spent our time being as lazy as we liked, or driving in the dense black forests of pine which cover the mountains and through vistas of which we could catch fascinating glimpses of the beautiful, town-dotted valley of the Arno some thousands of feet below.