_Nov. 20th.--_

I have been going about with a Bavarian Professor of mediaeval history,
showing him all over the country. Among other places we went to Rocca
Sant'Elmo, to see the former villa of the Dukes of Urbania, the villa
where Medea was confined between the accession of Duke Robert and the
conspiracy of Marcantonio Frangipani, which caused her removal to the
nunnery immediately outside the town. A long ride up the desolate
Apennine valleys, bleak beyond words just now with their thin fringe of
oak scrub turned russet, thin patches of grass seared by the frost, the
last few yellow leaves of the poplars by the torrents shaking and
fluttering about in the chill Tramontana; the mountaintops are wrapped
in thick grey cloud; tomorrow, if the wind continues, we shall see them
round masses of snow against the cold blue sky. Sant' Elmo is a
wretched hamlet high on the Apennine ridge, where the Italian
vegetation is already replaced by that of the North. You ride for miles
through leafless chestnut woods, the scent of the soaking brown leaves
filling the air, the roar of the torrent, turbid with autumn rains,
rising from the precipice below; then suddenly the leafless chestnut
woods are replaced, as at Vallombrosa, by a belt of black, dense fir
plantations. Emerging from these, you come to an open space, frozen
blasted meadows, the rocks of snow clad peak, the newly fallen snow,
close above you; and in the midst, on a knoll, with a gnarled larch on
either side, the ducal villa of Sant' Elmo, a big black stone box with
a stone escutcheon, grated windows, and a double flight of steps in
front. It is now let out to the proprietor of the neighboring woods,
who uses it for the storage of chestnuts, faggots, and charcoal from
the neighboring ovens. We tied our horses to the iron rings and
entered: an old woman, with disheveled hair, was alone in the house.
The villa is a mere hunting-lodge, built by Ottobuono IV., the father