DAYS NEAR ROME BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE 39 66 AUTHOR OF "WALKS IN ROME, MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE," ETC. With Illustrations TWO VOLUMES—II. PUBLIC LONDON 56, LUDGATE HILL 1875 [All rights reserved] CHAPTER XX. THE HERNICAN MONASTERIES AND THE GROTTO OF COLLEPARDO. (The best way of reaching these places is from the station of Frosi none on the Naples line; a carriage and two horses may be engaged there for the two days' excursion, and costs about 40 francs, but an exact understanding must be made at the station with the Vetturino as to what is required. There are very tolerable though humble hotels, and with very obliging and honest people, at Alatri and Frosinone.) N a beautiful April morning we reached Frosinone by ON rail from Rome. The country was in its freshest, brightest green. At the station we found plenty of carriages waiting, and were soon leaving the town of Frosinone behind on its high isolated hill, and advancing fast into the mountains, through a rich corn-clad country. On the left, the most conspicuous feature was always Fumone, a knot of castellated buildings and cypresses on a lofty conical hill, where, in a prison, which none who look upon it can help feeling unutterably desolate, the dethroned Coelestine, who had been dragged to the papal throne from his hermitage in the Abruzzi, was forced by his successor Boniface VIII., at the age of 81, to spend the last ten months of his life. "Like the meanest son of the Church, Coelestine fell at the feet of his successor; his only prayer, a prayer urged with tears, was that he might be permitted to return to his desert hermitage. Boniface addressed him |