I wrote this much, and then, leaving the M.-A. to glory in her innumerable correspondence, Arthur and I went off to the lake, where we have been for about seven hours. On it, I found it become infinitely more beautiful, for everything was mystified by a lovely bloomy haze, out of which the white peaks floated like dreams: and the mountains change and change, and seem not all the same as going when returning. Don't ask me to write landscape to you: one breathes it in, and it is there ever after, but remains unset to words.
The T——s whittle themselves out of our company just to the right amount: come back at the right time (which is more than Arthur and I are likely to do when our legs get on the spin), and are duly welcome with a diversity of doings to talk about. Their tastes are more the M.-A.'s, and their activities about halfway between hers and ours, so we make rather a fortunate quintette. The M—— trio join us the day after to-morrow, when the majority of us will head away at once to Florence. Arthur growls and threatens he means to be left behind for a week: and it suits the funny little jealousy of the M.-A. well enough to see us parted for a time, quite apart from the fact that I shall then be more dependent on her company. She will then glory in overworking herself,—say it is me; and I shall feel a fiend. No letter at all, dearest, this; merely talky-talky.—Yours without words.
LETTER XXX.
Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority had their way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves bumped down at the Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell exhausted to bed, and skipped out again by the first train next morning. Over the walls of the Campo Santo are some divine crumbs of Benozzo Gozzoli (don't expect me ever to spell the names of dead painters correctly: it is a politeness one owes to the living, but the famous dead are exalted by being spelt phonetically as the heart dictates, and become all the better company for that greatest of unspelled and spread-about names—Shakspere, Shakspeare, Shakespeare—his mark, not himself). Such a long parenthesis requires stepping-stones to carry you over it: "crumbs" was the last (wasn't a whole loaf of bread a stepping-stone in one of Andersen's fairy-tales?): but, indeed, I hadn't time to digest them properly. Let me come back to them before I die, and bury me in that inclosure if you love me as much then as I think you do now.
The Baptistry has a roof of echoes that is wonderful,—a mirror of sound hung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes to drop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that is his perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a single chord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living inside what in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound of a grand Amen."
The cathedral has fine points, or more than points—aspects: but the Italian version of Gothic, with its bands of flat marbles instead of moldings, was a shock to me at first. I only begin to understand it now that I have seen the outside of the Duomo at Florence. Curiously enough, it doesn't strike me as in the least Christian, only civic and splendid, reminding me of what Ruskin says about church architecture being really a dependant on the feudal or domestic. The Strozzi Palace is a beautiful piece of street-architecture; its effect is of an iron hand which gives you a buffet in the face when you look up and wonder—how shall I climb in? I will tell you more about insides when I write next.
I fear my last letter to you from Lucerne may either have strayed, or not even have begun straying: for in the hurry of coming away I left it, addressed, I think, but unstamped; and I am not sure that that particular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of the bill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, and suggesting a red-tape rectitude that would not show blind twenty-five-centime gratitude to the backs of departed guests. So be patient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two of yours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which I find most dear. I will say, for a fancy, the shorter, that you may ever be encouraged to write your shortest rather than none at all. One word from you gives me almost as much pleasure as twenty, for it contains all your sincerity and truth; and what more do I want? Yon bless me quite. How many perfectly happy days I owe to you, and seldom dare dream that I have made any beginning of a return! If I could take one unhappy day out of your life, dearest, the secret would be mine, and no such thing should be left in it. Be happy, beloved! oh, happy, happy,—with me for a partial reason—that is what I wish!