The withered old face broke up into the tenderest smile; it went to one’s heart that he should offer so timidly a service so precious. We spent the morning mousing about the church seeing all its treasures in the mellow glow of the old man’s enthusiasm.
“The illustrious ones have heard, perhaps, of a certain English writer who calls himself Ruskino?”
We said that we knew Ruskin’s books. He flushed with pleasure. “He was my friend; more than thirty times he visited Lucca, and he never came without making a sketch of the tomb of Ilaria.”
We go into the cathedral every day to look at Ilaria, where she sleeps in marble effigy, flower crowned, immortally young and lovely, just as Jacopo della Quercia, the sculptor, saw her, nearly five centuries ago. The tombs of Lucca remind one of the memorial tablets of the Street of Tombs in Athens. It is hard to say just where the resemblance lies; in form and manner there is little in common, the resemblance is of the subtler, deeper sort; a spiritual not a material likeness!
Palazzo Rusticucci, Rome, October 16, 1898.
We found our dear old palace very much as we had left it, save that Ignazio, the gardener, had suddenly, and without orders, added one hundred pots of flowers to the terrace. The difficulty and fatigue of watering this hanging garden of Babylon sometimes seems more than J. and I and Pompilia, our horticultural cook, can manage. Yet I cannot regret the addition which promises many new delights,—chrysanthemums among them. Pompilia asked many questions about what we had seen in our wanderings; she cannot forgive us for not having driven out to Bagni di Lucca! She tells me that she too is a great traveller.
“Sa, Signora mia, ho viaggiato per tutto il mondo. Da Lucca a Firenze, da Firenze a Lucca, da Lucca a Firenze, e poi a Roma! Know, mistress, that I have travelled all over the world, from Lucca to Florence” (the distance is about fifty miles), “from Florence to Lucca,” etc.
Our first visitor after our return to Rome was Sora Giulia, the dark-eyed Jewess who keeps an antiquarian’s shop in the Borgo Nuovo, a few doors away.
“Welcome home, Signora. I have brought you a few occasioni (bargains); a piece of lace, well, wait till you see it, un oggetto unico!”
Nena took Sora Giulia’s baby while the antiquarian untied her green damask bundle of old lace and linen.