The visitor should on no account omit to ring the bell and ask to
be shown the open Lombard gallery already referred to as running
round the outside of the choir. It is well worth walking round
this, if only for the view.

The official who showed us round was very kind, and as a personal
favour we were allowed to visit the fathers' private garden. The
large arm-chairs are made out of clipped box-trees. While on our
way to the garden we passed a spot where there was an alarming
buzzing, and found ourselves surrounded by what appeared to be an
angry swarm of bees; closer inspection showed that the host was a
medley one, composed of wasps, huge hornets, hive-bees, humble-
bees, flies, dragon-flies, butterflies, and all kinds of insects,
flying about a single patch of ivy in full blossom, which attracted
them so strongly that they neglected everything else. I think some
of them were intoxicated. If this was so, then perhaps Bacchus is
called "ivy-crowned" because ivy-blossoms intoxicate insects, but I
never remember to have before observed that ivy-blossoms had any
special attraction for insects.

I have forgotten to say anything about a beam of wood which may be
seen standing out at right angles from the tower to the right of
the main building. This I believe to have been the gallows.
Another like it may be seen at S. Giorio, but I have not got it in
my sketch of that place. The attendant who took us round S.
Michele denied that it was the gallows, but I think it must have
been. Also, the attendant showed us one place which is called Il
Salto della belle Alda. Alda was being pursued by a soldier; to
preserve her honour, she leaped from a window and fell over a
precipice some hundreds of feet below; by the intercession of the