It is needless to tell you that we take a carriage sans numero, for the private parks of the best palazzos allow only carriages without numbers to enter.
The scene on the Pincio is just what it was in Hawthorne's day. Read his description of it in the "Italian Note Book," and you will see it more clearly than I can make you understand. It is a continual fête champêtre.
One day, while we were obliged to stop on account of a jam in the ring of carriages that move slowly round and round the circle where the band plays, Ruth stepped from the vehicle to get nearer the beautiful fountain of Moses to make a little sketch of it. I sat alone listening to the glorious Italian band. And while my thoughts were thousands of miles away, and very near the one to whom this message goes first, some one spoke to me in French, and asked if I would have the goodness to go to his madame. It was the serving-man of our fellow-voyager, she of the same initials as my own. I looked in the direction he indicated, and there, not ten carriages back, she was, so hemmed in that it was impossible to drive alongside.
As I left my seat and walked over to her, she met me with the radiant face and smiling greeting of an old friend. She is beautiful, with that inimitable something about her that attracts one, and I wondered if I should ever know what her given name is. I knew for a certainty that I should never ask. She is not old, but gives one the impression that she has lived long enough to have "gathered the fruits of experience where once blossomed the flowers of youthful enthusiasm."
The bells for Ave Maria had rung. The musicians were picking up their music. The Pincian Hill was deserted. Ruth sat alone in her carriage as this woman's hand grasped mine in reluctant parting.
"Good night," I said.
"Good night!"
You recall my telling you of Mrs. F. on the ship—she whom I met on the Pincian Hill—and her invalid son? Well, he was not her son. He is her—husband.