Her “comfortable cup of tea” was ready by the time our supper was brought up—a good supper, hot, and served with praiseworthy alacrity. We ate it, and drank our tea, and looked at the fire, conscious that we ought also to feel it, it was such a brisk, fussy little conflagration. Landlord and servants were solicitous and attentive; hot-water bottles were tucked in at the foot of each frozen bed, and we sought our pillows in tolerable spirits.
Mine were at ebb-tide again next morning, as, lying upon the sofa, mummied in shawls, a duvet, covered with satinet and filled with down, on the top of the heap, yet cold under them all, my eyes wandered from the impertinent little fire that did not thaw the air twelve inches beyond the hearth, to the windows so clouded with rain I could hardly see the grim palace opposite, and I wondered why I was there. Was the game worth the expensive candle? Why had I not stayed at home and died like a Christian woman upon a spring-mattress, swathed in thick blankets, environed by friends and all the appliances conducive to euthanasia? I had begged the others to go out on a tour of business and sight-seeing. I should be quite comfortable with my books, and the thought of loneliness was preposterous. Was I not in Florence? Knowing this, it would be a delight to lie still and dream. In truth, I was thoroughly miserable, yet would have died sooner than confess it. I did not touch one of the books laid upon the table beside me, because, I said to my moody self, it was too cold and I too languid to put my hand out from the load of wraps.
There was a tap at the door. It unclosed and shut again softly. An angel glided over the Siberian desert of carpet—before I could exclaim, bent down and kissed me.
“Oh!” I sighed, in hysterical rapture. “I did not know you were in Italy!”
She was staying in the hotel at which we had applied for rooms the night before, and the handsome interpreter, Carlo, had reported our arrival to the Americans in the house.
Shall I be more glad to meet her in heaven than I was on that day to look upon the sweet, womanly face, and hear the cooing voice, whose American intonations touched my heart to melting? She sat with me all the forenoon, the room growing warmer each hour. Her party—also a family one—had now been abroad more than a year. The invalid brother, her especial charge, was wonderfully better for the travel and change of climate. He was far more ill than I when they left home. Of course I would get well! Why not, with such tender nurses and the dear Lord’s blessing? No! it did not “rain always in Florence;” but the rainy season had now set in, and “Frederic and I are going to Rome next week.” I question if she ever named herself, even in thought or prayer, without the prefix of “Frederic.”
“To Rome!” cried I, eagerly. “Dare you!”
My story of longing, discouragement, dreads—that had darkened into superstitious presentiments—followed. The day went smoothly enough after the confession, and the reassurances that it elicited. We secured smaller and brighter bed-rooms, and almost warmed them by ruinously dear fires, devouring as they did basketful after basketful of the Lilliputian logs. It was the business of one facchino to feed the holes in the walls of the three rooms we inhabited in the day-time. Other friends called—cordial and lavish of kind offices and offers as are compatriots when met upon foreign soil. One family—old, old friends of Caput—had, although now resident in Florence, lived for a year in Rome, and laughed to scorn our fears of the climate. They rendered us yet more essential service in suggestions as to clothing, apartments, and general habits of life in Central Italy. To the adoption of these we were, I believe, greatly indebted for the unbroken health which was our portion as a household during our winter in the dear old city.
We were in Florence ten days. Nine were repetitions, “to be continued,” of such weather as we had left in Paris. One was so deliciously lovely that, had not the next proved stormy, we should have postponed our departure. We made the most of the sunshine, taking a carriage, morning and afternoon, for drives in the outskirts of the town and in the suburbs, which must have given her the name of bella. The city proper is undeniably and irremediably ugly. The streets are crooked lanes, in which the meeting of two carriages drives foot-passengers literally to the wall. There are no sidewalks other than the few rows of cobble-stones slanting down from the houses to the gutter separating them from the middle of the thoroughfare. The far-famed palaces are usually built around courtyards, and present to the street walls sternly blank, or frowning with grated windows. If, at long intervals, one has snatches through a gateway of fountains and conservatories, they make the more tedious block after block of lofty edifices that shut out light from the thread-like street—shed chill with darkness into these dismal wells. This is the old city in its winter aspect. Wider and handsome streets border the Arno—a sluggish, turbid creek—and the modern quarters are laid out generously in boulevards and squares. We modified our opinions materially the following year, when weather and physical state were more propitious to favorable judgment. Now, we were impatient to be gone, intolerant of the praises chanted and written of Firenze in so many ages and tongues. The happiest moment of our stay within her gates was when we shook off so much of her mud as the action could dislodge from our feet and seated ourselves in a railway carriage for Rome.
It was a long day’s travel, but the most entrancing we had as yet known. Vallambrosa, Arezzo (the ancient Arretium), Cortona; Lake Thrasymene! The names leaped up at us from the pages of our guide-books. The places for which they stood lay to the right and left of the prosaic railway, like scenes in a phantasmagoria. We had, as was our custom when it could be compassed by fee or argument, secured a compartment to ourselves. There were no critics to sneer, or marvel at our raptures and quotations. Boy, ætat four, whose preparation for the foreign tour had been readings, recitations, and songs from “Lays of Ancient Rome,” in lieu of Mother Goose and Baby’s Opera, and whose personal hand-luggage consisted of a very dog-eared copy of the work, illustrated by stiff engravings from bas-reliefs upon coins and stones—bore a distinguished part in our talk. He would see “purple Apennine,” and was disgusted at the commonplace roofs of Cortona that no longer