this day's post, and
wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap for the feet
of your travellers. If they escape us after all, therefore, they may
praise their stars for it rather than my intentions--_our_ intentions,
I should say, for Robert will gladly do everything he can in the way
of expounding a text or two of the glories of Florence, and we both
shall be much pleased and cordially pleased to learn more of Fanny
and her brother than the glance at Pisa could teach us. As for me, she
will let me have a little talking for my share: I can't walk about or
see anything. I lie here flat on the sofa in order to be wise; I rest
and take port wine by wineglasses; and a few more days of it will
prepare me, I hope and trust, for an interview with the Venus de'
Medici. Think of my having been in Florence since Tuesday, this
being Saturday, and not a step taken into the galleries. It seems a
disgrace, a sort of involuntary disgraceful act, or rather no-act,
which to complain of relieves one to some degree. And how kind of you
to wish to hear from me of myself! There is nothing really much the
matter with me; I am just _weak_, sleeping and eating dreadfully well
considering that Florence isn't seen yet, and 'looking well,' too,
says Mrs. Jameson, who, with her niece, is our guest just now. It
would have been wise if I had rested longer at Pisa, but, you see,
there was a long engagement to meet Mrs. Jameson here, and she
expressed a very kind unwillingness to leave Italy without keeping it:
also she had resolved to come out of her way on purpose for this, and,
as I had the consent of my physician, we determined to perform our
part of the compact; and in order to prepare for the longer journey I
went out in the carriage a little too soon, perhaps, and a little too
long. At least, if I had kept quite still I should have been strong
by this time--not that I have done myself harm in the serious sense,
observe--and now the affair is accomplished, I shall be wonderfully
discreet and self-denying, and resist Venuses and Apollos like some
one wiser than the gods themselves. My chest is very well; there has
been no symptom of evil in that quarter.... We took the whole coupe
of the diligence--but regretted our first plan of the _vettura_
nevertheless--and now are settled in very comfortable rooms in the
'Via delle Belle Donne' just out of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella,
very superior rooms to our apartment in Pisa, in which we were