rselves cheated out of
our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what
the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona, a striking sea
city, holding up against the brown rocks and elbowing out the purple
tides, beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself, you
would call the houses that seem to grow there, so identical is the
colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona again when there
is a little air and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon
fish and cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long, and
really you should have seen me (or you should not have seen me) lying
on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense of female vanity, not
to say decency, with dishevelled hair at full length, and 'sans gown,
sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything,' except a petticoat and white
dressing wrapper. I said something feebly once about the waiter; but
I don't think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, 'Oh, don't
mind, dear,' certainly I didn't mind in the least. People _don't_,
I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers. Never
before did I guess what heat was--that's sure. We went to Loreto for a
day, back through Ancona, Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there
was no fair this year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose,
with selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna, back again
over the Apennines from Forli. A 'bel giro,' wasn't it? Ravenna, where
Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to
those yearnings. The churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere
of purple glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante's
tomb--well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna. The very antiquity of the
houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches
new and old, till the hot air is sick with them. To get to the pine
forest, which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the
exhalations pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more
than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante's tomb
'without an especial permission from the authorities.' Quite furious I
was about this, and both of us too angry to think of applying: but
we stood at the grated window and read the pathetic inscription as
plainly as if we had touched the marble. We stood there between three
and four in the morning, and then went straight on to Florence from
that tomb of the exiled poet.