iddle of January, and I
had found myself unexpectedly forced to return to England for the rest
of the winter. It was an insufferable disappointment; I was wretched and
broken-hearted. Italy appeared to me at that time so much better than
anything else in the world, that to rise from table in the middle of the
feast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of my days. I had
heard a great deal of praise of the south of France; but the south of
France was a poor consolation. In this state of mind I arrived at
Avignon, which under a bright, hard winter sun was tingling--fairly
spinning--with the _mistral_. I find in my journal of the other day a
reference to the acuteness of my reluctance in January 1870. France,
after Italy, appeared in the language of the latter country _poco
simpatica_; and I thought it necessary, for reasons now inconceivable,
to read the _Figaro_, which was filled with descriptions of the horrible
Troppmann, the murderer of the _famille_ Kink. Troppmann, Kink, _le
crime de Pantin_--the very names that figured in this episode seemed to
wave me back. Had I abandoned the sonorous south to associate with
vocables so base?
It was very cold the other day at Avignon, for though there was no
mistral, it was raining as it rains in Provence, and the dampness had a
terrible chill in it. As I sat by my fire late at night--for in genial
Avignon, in October, I had to have a fire--it came back to me that
eleven years before I had at that same hour sat by a fire in that same
room and, writing to a friend to whom I was not afraid to appear
extravagant, had made a vow that at some happier period of the future I
would avenge myself on the _ci-devant_ city of the Popes by taking it in
a contrary sense. I suppose that I redeemed my vow on the occasion of my
second visit better than on my third; for then I was on my way to Italy,
and that vengeance, of course, was complete. The only drawback was that
I was in such a hurry to get to Ventimiglia (where the Italian
custom-house was to be the sign of my triumph), that I scarcely took
time to make it clear to myself at Avignon that this was better than
reading the _Figaro_. I hurried on almost too fast to enjoy the
consciousness of moving southward. On this last occasion I was
unfortunately destitute of that happy faith. Avignon was my southernmost
limit, after which I was to turn round and proceed back to England. But
in the interval I had been a great deal in Italy, and th
|