Her cough had increased, and she could not read to me very often. Then one night she was taken ill with insupportable pains in her shoulders, which lasted for several hours, and then left her as weak as a baby. That was the beginning of the end.
Poor Giulia suffered more, I think, than her sister. She was now herself engaged to be married, and should naturally have been saving a little money for her wedding outfit. But of this she thought nothing; there was no room in her heart now for anything but Ida. All that she could save she spent daily in an attempt, nearly vain, to buy something that her sister could eat, and then she would come to my room, crying bitterly, to tell me of her failures and of Ida’s constantly progressing illness. But Ida continued to come to my room all that winter and spring, and the change in her for the worse was so very gradual that I was not much frightened about her. She seemed cheerful and interested in everything about her, as indeed she always had been. She was more beautiful than ever, and might have turned the heads of half the men in Florence if she had been so disposed, for as a general rule all those who saw her fell more or less in love with her. But Ida, kind and friendly in her manners with all those who treated her respectfully and kept their distance, would shrink into herself, and become quite unapproachable at the least shadow of a compliment; so that I do not think, after all, that any of her numerous admirers ever went so far as to make themselves very unhappy about her, seeing from the first that she was out of their reach.
All the poor people used to call her “Signora,” now that she was grown up, though her condition was no higher than their own. I am sure that it was not that she was better dressed than themselves (excepting in the one matter of neatness), still less that she gave herself any airs of superiority, for she was humble almost to a fault, willing to act as servant to the lowest amongst them if she could be of any use,[4] ready on all occasions to take the lowest place. But there was a certain peculiar refinement and unconscious loftiness about her which we all felt, and which raised her above other people.
And the summer came again, and this time we had to go away earlier than in other years because we had a friend very ill in Venice, who wished us to come to him. Ida came to take leave of me as I was preparing to leave my painting room, and she seemed more sorry to have me go than she had ever been before. She loved dearly that room where we had first met, and where we had spent so many hours together, some sad and some happy: it had always been one of her principal cares to put it in order when she came to me, and to bring flowers for it, and to make it look as pleasant and pretty as she could. And on that day she walked around it slowly, stopping often that she might look long on each one of the objects grown, in the course of time, to be like familiar friends. And then she came up to me and kissed me, and I saw that her eyes were overflowing with tears. I wonder if the thought was in her mind that she should never see the place again.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Three English pence. The larger payment at private houses, a franc, is one hundred centimes, or tenpence.
[2] L is not the initial of the lover’s real name, nor of that by which Ida called him, which is used by Francesca in her manuscript.
[3] Italics mine.—J. R.
[4] Italics all mine.—J. R.