She, like her husband, a distinguished author, has been my sincere friend for twenty years.
There was nothing to take me to Florence, nothing but a longing that time could not extinguish, a longing to see again its palaces, its churches, its Palazzo Vecchio in its over-powering might of grandeur embossing architecture on the sky; the Palazzo Strozzi, so defiant of all that is plebeian; the Casa Ricarsoli, so graceful as almost to say a house may be of the fairer sex! The Duomo, the Campanile, not yet under a glass case, as Michael Angelo said playfully, it was worthy to be; and the Sacristy at its side. These and more I longed to see again, with a passion that impels the wanderer to return to his native land. And those delicious walks to Fiesole and Bellosguardo, whence, from summits, one gazes on Florence as on an enchanted city!
Then the Tuscans, with their bright intellects and fine faces, from prince to peasant; their gentleness towards the stranger; their melodious, grammatical enunciation of the one sweet language perfected in the course of ages out of the beautiful words handed down from Greece and Rome.
I had thus reached Florence by Mont Cenis, Turin, Alexandria, and Pisa. At Genoa I inquired of a peasant my way; he took me to the place I wanted, a steep ascent. I offered him a gratuity, which he refused, saying, “The signor is a stranger!” Forty years before, one dark night, I asked a Prince Corsini, not knowing whom he was, to direct me to the Via Maggio where I lived. He turned out of his path and escorted me home.
LXI.
It was in September, ’73; I had much worldly business on hand for present time, and much that was prospective. I was sixty-three years old, yet in my prime; for I felt as if what Montaigne said was my case: every man thinks he has twenty years more to live—and I have done it, so at eighty-three, I have yet twenty before me! Yet, four days ago, December 4, ’91, was the third anni-re-versary of my broken leg, which will imprison me (without hard labour, unless word-picking and hemp-picking are one) for the term of my natural life!
Henry’s stay with me in Florence was short, but he went over the galleries with me, and the walks, then returned to Germany, while I settled myself down in pleasant rooms on the Lungarno Acciajoli (No. 18), overlooking river, bridges, heights of Boboli, Bellosguardo, and St. Miniato, my new and cheerful winter home, the air bright, the temperature 68° F., sun shining all day on my delightful windows.
What walks I thence took; often to the Boboli Gardens, whence falls on the vision a superb view of the city with its various tints of brown and white, so chaste, so compact, as to look like a massive cameo!