[Footnote 1: "Stanzone" is the term used in Tuscany to signify the buildings destined to shelter the "Agrumi," as the orange and lemon plants are called generically, in the winter; which in Florence is too severe to permit of their being left in the open air.]
I used in those days, and for very many years afterwards, to do all my writing standing; and I strongly recommend the practice to brother quill-drivers. Pauses, often considerable intervals, occur for thought while the pen is in the hand. And if one is seated at a table, one remains sitting during these intervals. But if one is standing, it becomes natural to one, during even a small pause, to take a turn up and down the room, or even, as I often used to do, in the garden. And such change and movement I consider eminently salutary both for mind and body.
I had specially contrived a little window immediately above the desk at which I stood, fixed to the wall. The room looking on the "loggia," which was the scene of the little poem transcribed in the preceding chapter, was abundantly lighted, but I liked some extra light close to my desk.
In that room my Bice was born. For it was subsequently to her birth that the destination of it was changed from a bedroom to a study.
Few men have passed years of more unchequered happiness than I did in that house. And I was very fond of it.
But, as may be readily imagined, it became all the more odious and intolerable to me when the "angel in the house" had been taken from me.
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION.
Assuredly it seemed to me that all was over; and the future a dead blank. And for a time I was as a man stunned.
But in truth it was very far otherwise! I was fifty-five; but I was in good health, young for my years, strong and vigorous in constitution, and before a year had passed it began to seem to me that a future, and life and its prospects, might open to me afresh; that the curtain might be dropped on the drama that was passed, and a new phase of life begun.