“Will you never tire of this unmitigated beauty? Will you never, cara mia, have a pining for a soft, gray day, with the perfumed damp that comes up from the velvet moss and dense greenery of an English copse? Will you heave no sigh for the pale but varied and most abundant wild flowers of your chilly springs, a lapful of primroses, a wealth of cowslips? Shall I have you longing after a narrow lane of yellow sand, the trees meeting overhead, the meadow-sweet growing lavishly in the moist hedge, and the ripe nuts hanging just within reach, crisp and sweet in their slippery brown shells? Shall I hear you reproaching me that the mushrooms are dotting the Sussex downs all round the fairy rings, and that you long to tread the close, fine grass where the sheep are browsing, with the little hillocks of purple thyme scenting the breeze with its aromatic breath? When your nerves are overstrung by the continuous dry heat and the brisk air of our joyous land, will not your Saxon nature long for one of the short autumn days of old England, when you might walk through the fields to the edge of the western hill, and watch the sun sink amidst yellow and red clouds painted on a pale blue sky, and then, returning in the soft wind of evening redolent with nameless perfumes, feel the damp like a creamy balm uncurl your locks and bathe your cheek as if with moist kisses? It will be almost dark when you reach home; there is a low wood-fire flickering on the hearth, and the steam of the urn curling up with a scent of new-made tea. Papers, pamphlets, magazines, and new volumes by the dozen from the London library are there to greet you. And day by day, hour by hour, in that land of rapid thought and universal intelligence, the latest news from pole to pole finds its way with every post into the remotest depths of the I country. Cara mia, it will not be so here.”
There had been a choking sensation in my throat as Emidio described the dear old land of my birth, and brought so vividly before me exactly those little touches of home and country life which I should most certainly not find in my future Roman palazzo or in the villa at Capo di Monte, beyond the garden of which I could not stray into any wild woods and barren but ever-beautiful heaths, as in England. But there was something in the close of the vision he called up before me which turned the current of feeling and made me smile. Strange as it may seem, I felt it was the newspapers and the I rapid intelligence that I could spare the more easily.
“There are good old books I have never read, Emidio, and which you have in your library. From time to time we will get a few new ones from the teeming British press. I am none the happier in England for tracing day by day the progress of modern ideas. I will turn my thoughts upon the past. I may sometimes sigh for the shady lanes and breezy downs of England; but I think the imperious beauty of Italy will hold quite as much sway over my heart in time. Are you satisfied?”
“I am satisfied as much as my jealous Italian nature will allow me to be.”
“Are all Italians jealous?”
“Nearly all, especially husbands.”
“But I shall never give you cause.”
“I am quite sure of that. But [pg 815] it will not prevent my being jealous. Do not look frightened, carissima.[180] I am not going to prove a regular Bluebeard, like some of my countrymen. But it would sound strange to your English ears to know the intense sense of appropriation which an Italian has with regard to his wife. It is true he adores her; but it is an adoration which would exclude the remotest homage of the merest stranger. He waits upon her, watches her, serves her. But it is possible to have too much of that, particularly when it is done with an evident intention to prevent the approach of any other human being. I had an acquaintance—for I cannot exactly call him a friend; he was too great a fool for that—who would not allow his wife to set her foot outside the door unless he accompanied her. She was not permitted to look out of the window, if he could prevent it; and he actually one day consulted me on the possibility of running a railing in front of his windows inside the rooms to prevent her getting near enough to look out.”
“And they did not shut him up as a madman?”
“Not at all; though I think the generality allowed he was eccentric. The poor woman had a melancholy time of it; for of course, if he would not allow her to look out, neither would he allow any one else to look in.”