Did you really kiss me on the two eyes, my Ba? I cannot say ‘perhaps at the very time I was thinking of you,’—more than ‘when I was breathing’—I breathe always, think of you always,—kiss you almost always. You dear, dearest Ba! Do pain me so again and again,—if you will so cure me every time! But you should not imagine that I can mistake the motive,—as if you loved me less and therefore wrote—oh, no—but there is no getting rid of these mistakings before the time: they bear their fruit and die away naturally ... the hoe never cuts up all their roots. I shall trust to hear you say one day I am past such mistaking—but—at Amalfi?

I am very glad, love, you go to Mr. Rogers’ to-day—what harm can follow? The evil in the other case was a very precise and especial one. They say his pictures are well worth seeing. Tell me, make me see you seeing! I am glad, too, Mrs. Jameson knows ... but her graciousness I expected, because the causes you were able to give her would really operate just in that manner: indeed they are the sole causes of the secresy we have observed. I cannot help liking Mrs. Jameson more, much more since her acquaintance with you. Hazlitt says somewhere that the misery of consorting with country-people is felt when you try for their sympathy as to favourite actors—‘Liston?’ says the provincial, ‘never heard of him’—but—whoever knows Miss Barrett ... ‘Ba,’ they are not going to be let know ... of such a person I know something more than of any other.

Talking of Hahn-Hahn, read this note of Mrs. Carlyle’s—although to my mortification I find that the wise man is not so peremptory on the virtue of one of Ba’s qualities as I, the ignorant man, must continue to be. Never mind,—perhaps ‘in the long run’ I may love you as if you were exactly to Mrs. Carlyle’s mind!

I want to tell you a thing not to be forgotten about Florence as a residence for any time. You spoke of the bad water at Ravenna ... which if a serious inconvenience anywhere is a very plague in Italy; well, the medical people, according to Valléry, attribute the black hollow cheeks and sunk eyes and general ill health of the Florentines to their vile water; impregnated with lead, I think. There is only one good fountain in the city—that opposite Santa Croce; I religiously abstained from drinking water there—and felt the privation the more from having just left Rome, where the water is the most perfectly delicious and abundant and, they say, wholesome—in the world. That one objection is decisive against Ravenna—but then, why do the English all live at Florence?

It makes me happy to hear of your achievements and not of any ill result—happy! Is it quite so warm to-day? If it were to rain to-morrow (!), if—our party would be postponed till the next day, Saturday, I believe ... there was a kind of understanding to that effect—now, in that case, might I go to you to-morrow? In the case of real heavy rain only——the letter to-morrow will tell me perhaps....

Goodbye, dearest dearest; I love you wholly—

E.B.B. to R.B.

Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, June 19, 1846.]

But I have not been to Mr. Rogers’s to-day, after all. I had a note from Mrs. Jameson, to put off our excursion to Saturday ... if I consented to Saturday! but of course I would not consent to Saturday—and as she intimated that another day would do as well, we shall have another day fixed, I suppose. What a good fruit it would be of the confession I made in the park, if she were to ask you to go!!! Oh, I should like that—I should like it notwithstanding the drawbacks. It would be a fair gain upon the usual times of meeting—only that I could not care quite as much for the pictures—yet, those too, I should like to see with you, rather than apart from you. And you never saw them ... you! Is there a hope of her asking you when you are at Greenwich together? Now I have got this into my head, it will not go out again—oh, you must try and enchant her properly at Greenwich and lead her into asking you. Yet, with you or without you in the body, the spirit of you and the influence of you are always close to my spirit when it discerns any beauty or feels any joy; if I am happy on any day it is through you wholly, whether you are absent or present, dearest, and ever dearest!

And so, instead of Mr. Rogers’s pictures, I have been seeing you in my thoughts, as I sate here all alone to-day. When everybody was at dinner I remembered that I had not been out—it was nearly eight ... there was no companion for me unless I called one from the dinner-table; and Wilson, whom I thought of, had taken holiday. Therefore I put on my bonnet, as a knight of old took his sword,—aspiring to the pure heroic,—and called Flush, and walked down-stairs and into the street, all alone—that was something great! And, with just Flush, I walked there, up and down in glorious independence. Belgium might have felt so in casting off the yoke. As to Flush, he frightened me a little and spoilt my vain-glory—for Flush has a very good, stout vain-glory of his own, and, although perfectly fond of me, has no idea whatever of being ruled over by me!—(he looks beautiful scorn out of his golden eyes, when I order him to do this or this) ... and Flush chose to walk on the opposite side of the street,—he would,—he insisted on it! and every moment I expected him to disappear into some bag of the dogstealers, as an end to his glory, à lui. Happily, however, I have no moral with which to point my tale—it’s a very immoral story, and shows neither Flush nor myself punished for our sins. Often, I am not punished for my sins, ... am I? You know that ... dearest, dearest! But then, even you are not punished for your sins ... when you flatter so! Ah, it is happy for you, and for your reputation in good taste and sense, that you cannot very well say such things except to me, who cannot believe them. For the rest, the eyes were certainly blinded, ... being kissed too hard.