LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066135690

Table of Contents

       ILLUSTRATIONS

       CHAPTER I SAINTS OF THE CHURCH

       CHAPTER II FOUNDER OF MONASTICISM

       CHAPTER III ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

       CHAPTER IV MEMORIES OF THE PANTHEON

       CHAPTER V EARLY LIFE OF FATHER MASTAI

       CHAPTER VI POPE PIUS IX

       CHAPTER VII CAPTIVITY OF POPE PIUS VII

       CHAPTER VIII IN SABINA

       CHAPTER IX PEOPLE OF THE HILLS

       CHAPTER X A STORY OF VENICE

       CHAPTER XI QUEEN JOAN OF NAPLES

       CHAPTER XII A MEDIÆVAL NIGHTMARE

       CHAPTER XIII THE VAMPIRE-MONARCH FROM HUNGARY

       CHAPTER XIV END OF JOAN’S CAREER

       CHAPTER XV NAPLES UNDER MURAT

       CHAPTER XVI MURAT’S LAST DAYS

       CHAPTER XVII ITALIAN SEAS

       CHAPTER XVIII SOUTHERN SHORES

       INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

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       ITALIAN YESTERDAYS

CHAPTER I SAINTS OF THE CHURCH

       Table of Contents

      It was my good fortune, many years ago, to make friends with a woman whose name was as beautiful as her mind—Mary Grace. We met in another hemisphere, under the Southern Cross, and for many days lived together in Chile’s one little Paradise, Viña del Mar. There, in shady patios, trellised with jessamine and bougainvillea, we talked of the impossible—of meeting in Rome and going together to the holy places and making better acquaintance with the Saints. Two or three years later the impossible happened. My Mary, with her daughter, Lilium, floated into my mother’s drawing-room in the Odescalchi one April afternoon, when the swallows were whirling above the courtyard and the house seemed all roses and sunshine. In the weeks that followed all our dream programme was realized; together we went to the Pope’s Mass, together knelt at his feet while Leo XIII laid his hand on Lilium’s golden head and blessed us and promised to pray for us and all our dear ones; and together we wandered from place to place in the Eternal City, I, who had known it all my life, learning many things from her who came there for the first time, as so often happens. Of all those pleasant inspiring hours, the one we both remembered most appreciatively, I think, was that of our visit to a lonely spot on the Aventine—the hill that somehow has always kept its character and is even to-day very little hurt by the destructions that have defaced most of the other quarters of the town.

      My friend was Irish, pur sang, and her appreciations were extremely individual ones: things that other people felt obliged to rave about left her quite cold; but when she had caught and joined the links of some beautiful story that the world had overlooked or forgotten, she became a veritable flame of enthusiasm, and every tiny detail and souvenir she could connect with

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