how fond we are of you, and the pleasure it always gives
us to get a glimpse of you. (Not that we have not also very pleasant
associations with your wife,[1] but she is as yet stranger to us of
course.) But we went away in search of complete repose. And in the
Black Forest there was not a soul to speak to, and we liked it so much
as to stay on there.

[Footnote 1: I had married my second wife on the 29th of October,
1866.]

"We contemplate moving southwards in the spring, and if we go to Italy
and come _near_ Florence, we shall assuredly make a _detour_ and come
and see you. Polly wants to see Arezzo and Perugia. And I suppose we
can still get a _vetturino_ to take us that way to Rome? Don't want
railways, if to be avoided. I don't think we can get away before
March, for my researches are so absorbing, that, if health holds out,
I must go on, if not, we shall pack up earlier. The worst of Lent is
that one gets no theatres, and precisely because we never go to the
theatre in London, we hugely enjoy it abroad. Yesterday we took the
child of a friend of ours to a morning performance of the pantomime,
and are utterly knocked up in consequence. Somehow or other abroad the
theatre agrees with us. Polly sends the kindest remembrances to you
and your wife. Whenever you want anything done in London, consider me
an idle man.

"Ever yours faithfully,

"G.H. LEWES."

* * * * *

And on the 28th February, in the same year, accordingly he writes:--

* * * * *

"Touching our visit to Florence, you may be sure we could not lightly
forego such a pleasure. We start to-morrow, and unless we are recalled
by my mother's health, we calculate being with you about the end of
March. But we shall give due warning of our arrival. We both look
forward to this holiday, and 'languish for the purple seas;' though
the high winds now howl a threat of anything but a pleasant crossing
to Calais. _Che! Che!_ One must pay for one's pleasure! With both of
our warmest salutations to you and yours,

"Believe me, yours faithfully,

"G.H. LEWES."

* * * * *

The travellers must, however, have reached us some days before the end
of March, for I have a letter to my wife from George Eliot, dated
from Naples on the 1st of April, 1869, after they had left us. She
writes:--

* * * * *

"MY DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,--The kindness whi