‘C’est foudroyante!’ said the pretty French modiste.

‘What the devil’s broke loose?’ shouted an American.

‘Mein Gott im himmel! was ist das?’ roared the German baron.

‘Casaccio! cosa faceste?’ shrieked the lovely Countess Grimanny.

‘In nomine Domine!’ groaned a fat friar.

‘Caramba! vayase al infierno!’ screamed Don Santiago Gomez.

‘Bassama teremtete!’ swore the Hungarian gentleman.

Louder squealed the bagpipes, their buzz filled the air, their shrieks went ringing up to MacGuilp like the cries of Dante’s condemned.  The duchess found the sound barbarous.  MacGuilp opened his window, upon which the pipers strained their lungs for the Signore Inglese, grand amateur of the bagpipes.  He begged them to go away.  ’No, no, signore; we know you love our music; we won’t go away.’

The duchess could stand it no longer, her Servant called the carriage, the English got in and drove off.

Still rung out the sounds of the six bagpipes.  Caper threw them more baiocchi.

Suddenly MacGuilp burst out of the door of his house, maul-stick in hand, rushing on the pifferari to put them to flight.

‘Iddio giusto!’ shouted two of the pipers; ’it is, IT IS the Cacciatore! the hunter; the Great Hunter!’

‘He is a painter!’ shouted another.

’No, he isn’t; he’s a hunter. Gran Cacciatore! Doesn’t he spend all his time after quails and snipe and woodcock?  Haven’t I been out with him day after day at Ostia?  Long live the great hunter!’

MacGuilp was touched in a tender spot.  The homage paid him as a great hunter more than did away with his anger at the bagpipe serenade.  And the last Caper saw of him he was leading six pifferari into a wine shop, where they would not come out until seven of them were unable to tell the music of bagpipes from the music of the spheres.

So ends the music, noises, and voices, of the seven-hilled city.

SERMONS IN STONES.

One bright Sunday morning in January, Rocjean called on Caper to ask him to improve the day by taking a walk.

’I thought of going up to the English chapel outside the Popolo to see a pretty New Yorkeress,’ said the latter; ’but the affair is not very pressing, and I believe a turn round the Villa Borghese would do me as much good as only looking at a pretty girl and half hearing a poor sermon.’

‘As for a sermon, we need not miss that,’ answered Rocjean, ’for we will stop in at Chapin the sculptor’s studio, and if we escape one, and he there, I am mistaken.  They call his studio a shop, and they call his shop the Orphan’s Asylum, because he manufactured an Orphan Girl some years ago, and, as it sold well, he has kept on making orphans ever since.

‘The murderer!’