olute contentment with single life as the alternative
to the great majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a
feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned
with his various godships. Especially too, in my position, I could
not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are
genuine feelings, and do not pass like a cloud. We are as happy as
people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to _try_ this
new relationship of ours--in the utmost seclusion and perpetual
_tete-a-tete_--no amusement nor distraction from without, except some
of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the
memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on
translations from the French--as we find from the library--not merely
of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower--long past De
Kock--to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian
is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no
breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us
from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting
alive--which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and
imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.

Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new' for the
summer--_pastures_ new, I should have said--but it comes to the same
thing. The _padrone_ in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious
recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish
of oranges--two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist
with the morning's dew--every great orange of twelve or thirteen with
its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I
beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them
day by day after our two o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision
of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been
as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the _pomegranate_
given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of
all our caravan of travellers--Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson[153]
both there--for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never
seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one 'deep
down the middle'[154]--accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion
of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives
and pomegranates I se