They were full of the thrill of expected emotion,--that most delicious
of all sensations.

And they received no disappointment from this old "red city." They saw
its beautiful, incomparably beautiful, Cathedral, full of richness of
sculpture and color in morning, noon, and evening light; and were never
tired of admiring every part of it, from its graffito and mosaic
pavement to its vaulted top filled with arches and columns, that
reminded them of walking through a forest aisle and looking up through
the interlaced branches of trees.

They visited the Cathedral Library, whose walls are covered with those
historical paintings by Pinturrichio, the little deaf Umbrian painter,
in whose design Raphael is said to have given aid.

But Mr. Sumner wished that the time they could give to the study of
paintings be spent particularly among the works of the old Sienese
masters. So they went again and again to the Accademia delle Belle Arti
and studied those quaint, half-Byzantine works, full of pathetic grace,
by Guido da Siena, by Duccio, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, and the
Lorenzetti brothers.

Here, too, they found paintings by Il Sodoma, a High Renaissance artist,
which pleased them more than all else. _The Descent into Hades_, where
is the exquisitely lovely figure of Eve, whose mournful gaze is fixed
on her lost son, toward whom the Saviour stoops with pity, drew them
again and again to the hall where the worn fresco hangs; and after they
had found, secluded in its little cabinet, that fragment which
represents _Christ Bound to a Column_, of which Paul Bourget has written
so tenderly, they voted this painter one of the most interesting they