looked gloomy and shook their heads. Nothing really desirable was left, they said, absolutely nothing. We had heard that sort of thing before, however, and quite undismayed set forth upon our quest, with maps and lists, and a little file of advertisements clipped from the newspapers.

I dare say we bore our errand in our faces. Still we have never been able to account for the apparition of Guiseppe, waiting at the door to seize upon us. Guiseppe was porter of the hotel where we had stayed awhile the year before. He had somehow scented our arrival, and there he stood, seedy and shabby as befits a porter out of place, but with the old debonair bow and smirk, and ready to consecrate himself, his time and talents to our service. We wished for none of them, but how to get rid of the poor fellow, with his hungry smile and voluble proffers of assistance? Did we want a first-floor? Did we want a second? Did we want sun, servants? He knew a cook. He knew a maid of all work. He already had spoken of us to a washerwoman. He knew exactly what we wanted, whatever it was; nay, he himself was out of service, was free to become our henchman if we so desired. "Do send him away," whispered the strong-minded of the party; but nobody had the heart to do so, and we endured his company up half-a-dozen long staircases, and his introduction to as many "Padronas," all of whom consulted his eyes before stating their terms, and telegraphed and winked behind our backs when they thought we were looking the other way. Each appartement in turn, was exactly what we wanted, according to Guiseppe and the Padronas. Did the windows face north? Was the furniture insufficient? What would we have? with the inevitable shrug; all windows could not look to the south, and besides, had the Signorine noticed the view of Fiesole? That view of Fiesole played a prominent part in all our negotiations, so long as Guiseppe remained in our company. It was expected to take the place of armchairs, of forks, of sunshine, to be worth five hundred francs a month, to atone for evil smells. This becoming intolerable at length, our strongest-minded of all came to

the rescue, and disregarding a fluent, "And now the signorine will see the appartement in the Casa Braccia, and the one in the Lung Arno, and the two in the Della Scala," gave Guiseppe two francs and dismissed him with a suave Grazie," and a good morning. But half an hour after, as we were groping for the right bell at the dingy door of the Casa Braccia, lo! a voice, a cringing deprecating presence! there he was again, popping up from under the pavement, as it seemed, and for all we could do, he rang the bell, sped up stairs in front of us, and again the nods and becks and telegraphs were renewed, the view of Fiesole indicated, and all the artlessly artful game of finesse played off for our benefit. Nothing but the decisive step of calling a cab and driving off at full speed, rid us of our attached and embarrassing follower.

Guiseppe left behind, we ordered the coachman to proceed slowly, that we might keep a look-out for those affiches of soiled paper, which pinned to the ground-floor windows of houses, indicate rooms to let overhead. The first which we spied bore the words "Ultimo piano" or top story, and we groaned, for well we knew what that imported in the way of stairs. Nobody answered the bell, but in a minute the door opened of, itself, with an odd, jerking motion, and admitted us to the stone-floored inner court. How little can any one at home imagine the sort of entrance hall over which Americans abroad are content to live. They are a happy mixture of cellar and dust-bin. They look like old, disused country post-offices, and they smell of fungus and the middle ages. As we entered, holding up our skirts and hesitating, a voice fell like a falling star from somewhere above, and craning our necks backward, we were aware of a dim silhouette bending over the third floor banister. "Chi è?" (who is it?) ejaculated the voice, and we as in duty bound, responded " Amici" (friends). and prepared to ascend.

Up and up and up, very dirty stairs, and very cold, being entirely of stone, to which a coating of green and white paint simulating a carpet, failed to impart the slightest warmth. Panting and out of breath we

reached the last landing to find a little weazened, anxious woman bowing and courtseying and holding open a door. "Rooms? Ah, yes? Sicuro! bellissimi! Enter, ladies, enter." Taught by experience, we tried to save time by preliminary parley. Were there three bed-rooms in the appartement, four beds, linen, silver, sun, a free kitchen, a room for a servant? "Sicuro, certamente, all, everything; come in ladies, come in!" absolutely magnetizing us with her appealing eyes. So in we went, and groped our way along a dark passage, the Padrona leading, till she opened a door and revealed a minute, oblong closet, almost entirely filled up by the narrow brick shelf, which, in Italy, does duty for a kitchen range. There were a few old saucepans, a windlass and bucket for drawing water from the yard below; that was all the furnishing, and I think only a very thin cook could have squeezed herself between the shelf and the wall. The Padrona, however, considered it lovely. She waved her hand and cried, "Ecco! ecco! la cucina!" "Here! here is the kitchen," in quite a triumphant voice. Then she showed us a closet still smaller, which she said was the servant's bed-room, and opening beyond that, two chambers with dimity curtains, and windows looking into a narrow court. The Padrona's voice sounded a little faint as she assured us that at early morning, sun came in at these windows," so warm, oh, so warm!" and the tiny compass on D.'s watch chain gave her the lie so decidedly, that I think she finally felt with us that the less said on that subject the better.

Beyond the sleeping chambers was the dining-room, beyond that a small salon. The walls of the salon were pink; its chairs and table had spindling legs of gilt-andwhite wood, and were covered with pumpkin-colored satin, enlivened by a pattern in cabbage roses. Most of the space was absorbed by a monumental center-table, the like of which none of us had ever seen before. Its base was stucco, representing rockwork and shells; from this rose a conglomeration of whales' tails and cupids supporting a huge, round top of marbleized slate. A tiny, bright blue stove with a pinched grate occupied one corner of the salon. The

Padrona drew up the blind, and pointing to the broad yellow ray on the sill, ejaculated joyfully, "See, my ladies, the sun!"

Alas, it would not do. The poor Padrona saw it in our looks. Her face fell. She looked so disappointed that just for her sake we were tempted to take the appartement; only there are such numbers of old women in Italy, and three months' discomfort is a very high price to pay for making only one of them happy. We looked about again. No, it would not do. There were but four spoons, three tea-cups and a half; a suspicious smokiness which seems incorporated into the very substance of the diningroom, told tales of the chimney. Finally, some one declared that pink-and-pumpkin in combination made her ill, and that the parlor-table would give us all nightmare. We edged toward the door. The Padrona's smile grew weaker, but courtesy, the inalienable heritage of her country-people, did not fail her, and her " Addio, my ladies," was no less musical because we had inflicted upon her a disappointment;-not the first in her life, poor soul, nor, I fear, the last.

Our next stop was at a door in the oldest part of Florence. An aged woman admitted us, and at her call came the Padrone a thin, courtly figure clad in a flowered silk dressing-gown of antique pattern. Both he and his servant seemed to date back to the time of the Medici, and the rooms under their charge were as much a part of the past as they. Heavy curtains of old damask hung over the doors. The windows, set high in the wall of the house, to protect its inmates from the musket shots of any adverse Guelph or Ghibeline who might chance to pass by, could be reached only by means of a flight of steps and a wooden inside balcony. Ascending these, one had the privilege of looking out, nay, on a bright day, might even see to read or to thread a needle. A camp-chair stood on one of these platforms. The Padrone pointed to it with his forefinger and a congratulatory smile. Here was a modern improvement, the gesture seemed to say-human beings and daylight brought together on terms of equal comfort. What more would we have?

Portraits, which time had merged into

their backgrounds, stared dimly from tar nished frames. In the far-off concavities of the ceiling, appeared blurred figures of cupids and genii, bright and distinct perhaps in those by-gone days, when Machiavelli or Michael Angelo were honored guests beneath that roof. The very wood-box was covered with old tapestry, a fragment of that which draped the walls of the diningroom, and set forth in a faded but appetizing manner, the Massacre of the Innocents. The lighting of this refectory was accomplished by means of a hole, some three feet square, cut near the ceiling. Faint cracks here and there in the frescoed walls, revealed the existence of cupboards, opening in surprising places, in chimney-jambs, at bedheads, or along the sides of windows. There was a mysterious spiral stair-case, leading we could not divine whither. A faint odor of ghosts and dead dinners pervaded all: the rustling of the old Padrone's silken gown was like the rustle of leaves in the meditative autumn.

"Don't you think it would be rather nice to sit here and think about Michael Angelo and read up Florentine history?" asked the lover of the past.

"And how about rainy days, when we don't want to think about Michael Angelo, and don't care a button for Florence history, or anything else except keeping warm and comfortable?" responded another voice, full of the nineteenth century. Somehow the words swept us briskly toward the door. The old Padrone drew his brocaded gown about him, and saw us depart with wellassumed indifference. It was all one to him, he stated. If he let the rooms, bene; if not, bene again.

I forget if it was next after this that we went to look at a palace to let, a whole palace, with a conservatory, a dozen drawing-rooms, a library hung with ancestors, a chapel with a presiding madonna. Then we had a narrow escape from a charming appartement, whose only defect was a smell, a smell which the Padrona assured us, was as the gales of Araby in its effects on the human system. We learned just in time, that only the year before, three persons had died of diphtheria in these rooms, which accounted

for the fact of their thus standing empty in the very heart of the season.

We visited rooms on the cold side of the street, whose owners implored us almost with tears to accept the thin streak of sunshine on the back windows, as ample for our needs. There were suites with a commissariat attached, which doubled the price of living; unfurnished suites, fabulously cheap, $200 perhaps for twelve and fourteen rooms; suites over noisy piazzas teeming with omnibuses and street bands, where sleep would be an impossible thing and daytimes distracting. At last, and long though it sounds the search occupied less time than this description-we lighted on the very thing which we desired, the second floor of a house in the bright modern quarter of Florence, within a stone's throw of the Arno. It stood at the junction of three streets, which gave the advantage of sunshine on three sides, and an off-look in three different directions; and happened to be vacant, because, luckily for us, its owner had been unwilling in October to let it for less than six months. Now, with the season one-third gone, she was more reasonable, and we moved in at once.

There were six rooms in the suite, making the side, one end and half the other side of a long parallelogram. The small kitchen opened into a corner dining-room, from whose northern window we had a full view of the famous hill of Fiesole, a mosaic of vineyards, walled gardens, quaint roofs and groves of cypress, with dreamy blue shadows checkering its outline, and the sombre pile of the Duomo and monasteries crowning the top. Beyond this was a large salon, with four delightful windows east and south, from which we saw San Miniato, and lovely Bellosguardo with its villas and farmhouses set in masses of freshest verdure. Still beyond were three bed-rooms with full exposure to the south. A long, stone-paved passage gave entrance to these chambers, and somewhere at the north end of the building, were more little rooms, in which our Padrona, an Englishwoman, dwelt.

She was an ex-ladies' maid, who, according to a not infrequent practice among ladies' maids, had ended her career by marrying a courier and retiring with him to his native

cost, we reckoned, thirty cents a day for our party of four. Once a week, another brown contadino left at our door a great flask of chianti wine, with a wisp of tow tied over its slender neck, and a film of golden oil floating on top to keep out air. None of us cared for wine, but what alternative in a country where water, boiled and set aside to cool, shows a deposit of lime an inch thick at the bottom of the carafe?

Each afternoon, a tin box walked up our stair on top of a man's head. It held our dinner. The trattoria system is like the little girl, with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead:

"When it is good it is very, very good,

When it is bad it is horrid."

We were fortunate in our trattore. His boxes held a wonderful deal, and things were always hot. Smoking soup, a joint or chops or beefsteak with a vegetable, a fowl or birds with another vegetable, and a sweet dish of some sort, tart, jam pudding, blanc mange or pancakes, with raspberry-such was the daily ration, for which we paid ten francs a day. Always there was plenty for a fifth person, if a friend happened to dine with us, and always enough to supply luncheon for next day. On special occasions we designated what we would like, but generally the menu was left to the discretion of the trattore, and rarely did he disappoint us. Salad, fruit, etc., we bought ourselves; sometimes stopping for the purpose in the quaint, delightful markets, where old women, red capped and white capped, sit in rows beside their many-colored wares, and the chattering and jargoning is as constant and musical as the notes of the busy sparrows on the roofs over head; roofs crowned with old lanterns and carved escutcheons, which look quietly down on the busy scene beneath, just as they looked four hundred years ago, when Florence was in its prime. But more frequently we resorted to the shops, among which, according to the practice of housekeepers everywhere, we soon established preferences and favorites. Before long we knew exactly where to turn for all we needed coffee, chocolateknew who had the crispest lettuce, the best figs-sun-dried and sweet; a fig unknown to

export; the best mandarini, tiny seedless oranges, with an aromatic flavor as peculiar in its way as the zest of a lime. We had also learned the secret of Pane santo, a delicate cake peculiar to Florence, and made in part of arrowroot; and the other secret of pan forti di Sienna. This is a conglomeration of almonds, honey and chocolate, delicious as pernicious, and is warranted to collect grandmothers of all nationalities round the pillows of those sleepers who partake of it at any hour after sundown.

Our maid was a very tall Italian. She was so much too big for our kitchen that I was always reminded of Gulliver in Lilliput. Her name was Maria, but in private life she went by the name of "the giantess." "Pull the latch string, and the giantess will fly out," was the direction which we gave our friends. There must once have been a hint of higher fortunes in Maria's fate, for she had been partially trained for the lyric stage, and astonished us occasionally by bursting into grand tragic arias over her dish-washing. We fancied she had proved too stupid for her mètier, for she was almost devoid of intelligence in anything which did not come into the routine of common work, but we were never able to unravel the story.

Every morning at breakfast time, a wiry little old man with twinkling black eyes came creeping up our stair-case, with a huge market-basket full of flowers on his arm. It makes me sigh with pleasure now to think of those flowers. They were mostly wild ones, but they did not seem so to us, for they were of the kinds which we had been used to see growing in gardens-jonquils, lilies-of-the-valley, tulips, narcissus, field lilies, ranunculuses, splendid in every shade of yellow and orange and deep red, clusters of roses, torn from the walls where they bloom all winter long, ivy sprays, lauristinas, irises, myrtle, and that oddly tinted purple-black lily which is the emblem of Florence.

Later, he brought lilacs, fruit blossoms, anemones, purple, pink and scarlet, long dropping boughs of wisteria flowers and the delicious little Banksia rose. All these delightful creatures would he pour out on the table, and then would begin the most comical process of bargaining! The