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Schoolboy Days in Italy, Or, Tito, the Florentine
Schoolboy Days in Italy Or Tito the Florentine Author:Paschal Grousset General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Estes and Lauriat Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you c... more »an select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. THE RANDAL HOUSEHOLD. -- THE LIBRARY OF THE VATICAN. AS the innumerable beauties and wonders of Rome became revealed to Jacques Baudouin, life in the Eternal City seemed one long series of enchantments. The statues in the Capitol and in the Vatican, the frescos of Raphael and of Michael Angelo, the magnificent ruins which he had known chiefly heretofore through Piranese's water colors, the climate, the Medici Villa, and the frank gayety of his fellow students, -- all delighted him. Yet the spot that pleased him best of all was a cosy little nook on a corner of the Piazza Navone, -- the home of M. Randal. A few days after his arrival, he wrote to one of his former teachers and dearest friends, M. Pellerin, Professor of Rhetoric at the Montaigne Lycee, giving his first impressions. He told him of the joke his fellow-students had tried to play upon him, and expressed his wonder and delight at the treasures of art that met his gaze at every step; but above all he thanked him for having introduced him to M. Randal. " I can conceive of nothing more charming than this refined and cheerful home," he wrote. " Thanks to your kind letter, I have received a most cordial welcome there. M. Randal was so good as to invite me to dinner, and Ireally begin to feel almost like one of the family. I hardly know which I admire most, this learned but unassuming man, his charming daughter, Mdlle. Celia, or Nonna, as they call the grandmother. But I am inclined to think it is Nonna. Imagine, my dear friend, a calm, sweet-faced woman, with a profusion of snow-white hair; of...« less