reathing becomes oppressed in the narrow
valleys, and if you want to get a distant view--there's nothing to
be seen, for everywhere some good-for-nothing mountain thrusts itself
directly before your nose. I believe the Lord created those humps for
a punishment to men after Adam's fall. On the sixth day of creation the
earth was level. It was in August, and when the noon sun was reflected
from the rocks, the heat was enough to kill one; it's a miracle, that
I'm not sitting beside you dried up and baked. The famous blue of the
Italian sky! Always the same! We have it here in this country too, but
it alternates with beautiful clouds. There are few things in Holland I
like better than our clouds. When the rough Apennines at last lay behind
me, I reached the renowned city of Florence."

"And can you deny it your approval?" asked the musician.

"No, sir, there are many proud, stately palaces and beautiful churches
and no lack of silk and velvet everywhere, the trade of cloth-weaving
too is flourishing; but my health, my health was not good in your
Florence, principally on account of the heat, and besides I found many
things different from what I expected. In the first place, there's the
river Arno! The stream is a puddle, nothing but a puddle! Do you know
what the water looks like? Like the pools that stand between the broken
fragments and square blocks in a stonecutter's yard, after a heavy
thunder-shower."

"The score, Captain, the score!"

"I mean the yard of a stone-cutter, who does a large business, and pools
of tolerable width. Will you still contradict me if I maintain--the
Arno is a shallow, narrow stream, just fit to sail a boy's bark-boat.
It spreads over a wide surface of grey pebbles, very much as the gold
fringe straggles over the top of Junker von Warmond's fencing-glove."

"You saw it at the end of a hot summer," replied Wilhelm, "it's very
different in spring."

"Perhaps so; but I beg you to remember the Rhine, the Meuse, and our
other rivers, even the Marne, Drecht and whatever the smaller streams
are called. They remain full and bear stately ships at all seasons of
the year. Uniform and reliable is the custom of this country; to-day one
way, to-morrow another, is the Italian habit. It's just the same with
the blades in the fencing-school."

"The Italians wield dangerous weapons," said von Warmond.

"Very true, but they bend to and fro and lack firmness. I know what
I'm talking about, for I lodged wi