"Yes, that is where our King (Victor Emmanuel) goes when he wants to hunt. And when Azeglio wants the King back, he writes to his ministers, 'The tyrant wants to amuse himself,'—because his enemies do call him the tyrant."
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"It is a dreadful thing not to remember. I had a friend once who married an Italian lady. One day they were at a party, and he went out in the course of the evening. Nothing was thought of it at the time; Italians often do go out. At last his wife became excited—agitated. They tried to calm her, but she thought he had poséd her there and gone away and left her for ever. She flew home, and there he was comfortably seated by his fireside. 'Oh, Tommaso, Tommaso!' she exclaimed. 'Che, che!' he said. 'Oh, why did you leave me?' she cried. 'Oh,' said he, striking his forehead, 'I did forget that I was married!'"[226]
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"There was a poor woman whose son was dreadfully ill, and she wanted to get him a doctor; but somehow, instead of going for the doctor, she fell asleep, and dreamt that her son was ill, and that she was going for the doctor. She went first (in her dream) to the house of the first physician in the town, but, when she arrived, the door was crowded with a number of pale beings, who were congregating round it, and calling out to those within. So the woman asked them what they were, and they said, 'We are the spirits of those who have been killed by the treatment of this doctor, and we are come to make him our reproaches.' So the woman was horrified, and hurried away to the house of another doctor, but there she found even more souls than before; and at each house she went to, there were more and more souls who complained of the doctors who had killed them. At last she came to the house of a very poor little doctor who lived in a cottage in a very narrow dirty street, and there there were only two souls lamenting. 'Ah!' she said, 'this is the doctor for me; for while the others have killed so many, this good man in all the course of his experience has only sent two souls out of the world.' So she went in and said, 'Sir, I have come to you because of your experience, because of your great and just reputation, to ask you to heal my son.' As she talked of his great reputation the doctor looked rather surprised, and at last he said, 'Well, madam, it is very flattering, but it is odd that you should have heard so much of me, for I have only been a doctor a week.' Ah! then you may imagine what the horror of the woman was—he had only been a doctor a week, and yet he had killed two persons!... So she awoke, and she did not go for a doctor at all, and her son got perfectly well."
In May we went to spend a week at Mentone, seeing old haunts and old friends; thence also I went for three days with Lady Grey to S. Remo, where we drew a great deal, but I did not then greatly admire S. Remo. We stayed a few days at Arles, where M. and Madame Pinus, the landlord of the Hôtel du Nord and his wife, had become quite intimate friends by dint of repeated visits. Each time we stayed at Arles we made some delightful excursion: this time we went to S. Gilles. Then by a lingering journey, after our fashion of the mother's well-days, loitering to see Valence and Rochemaure, we reached Geneva, where we had much kindly hospitality from the family of the Swiss pasteur Vaucher, with whose charming daughter we had become great friends at Mentone two years before. We were afterwards very happy for a fortnight in the pleasant Pension Baumgarten at Thun, and went in einspanners in glorious weather to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. On our way north, we lingered at Troyes, and I also made a most interesting excursion from Abbeville to St. Riquier and the battlefield of Crecy, where the old tower from which Edward III. watched the battle still stood,[229] and the cross where the blind King of Bohemia fell amid the corn-lands.
It was the 9th of June when we reached Holmhurst, and on the 15th I went to Arthur Stanley's house at Oxford for the Commemoration, at which the lately married Prince and Princess of Wales were present, she charming all who met her as much by her simplicity as by her grace and loveliness. "No more fascinating and lovely creature," said Arthur, "ever appeared in a fairy-story." Mrs. Gladstone was at the Canonry and made herself very pleasant to everybody. "Your Princess is so lovely, it is quite a pleasure to be in the room with her," I heard her say to the Prince of Wales. "Yes, she really is very pretty," he replied.