's health, to which it bore such an intimate and vital
relation, the indifference of the Countess Massiglia to their needs
became the supreme and absorbing concern of life at the villa, and led to
continued and almost continuous house-hunting.

Days when the weather permitted, Clemens drove over the hills looking for
a villa which he could lease or buy--one with conveniences and just the
right elevation and surroundings. There were plenty of villas; but some
of them were badly situated as to altitude or view; some were falling to
decay, and the search was rather a discouraging one. Still it was not
abandoned, and the reports of these excursions furnished new interest and
new hope always to the invalid at home.

"Even if we find it," he wrote Howells, "I am afraid it will be months
before we can move Mrs. Clemens. Of course it will. But it comforts us
to let on that we think otherwise, and these pretensions help to keep
hope alive in her."

She had her bad days and her good days, days when it was believed she had
passed the turning-point and was traveling the way to recovery; but the
good days were always a little less hopeful, the bad days a little more
discouraging. On February 22d Clemens wrote in his note-book:

At midnight Livy's pulse went to 192 & there was a collapse. Great
alarm. Subcutaneous injection of brandy saved her.

And to MacAlister toward the end of March:

We are having quite perfect weather now & are hoping that it will bring
effects for Mrs. Clemens.

But a few days later he added that he was watching the driving rain
through the windows, and that it was bad weather for the invalid. "But
it will not last," he said.

The invalid improved then, and there was a concert in Florence at which
Clara Clemens sang. Clemens in his note-book says:

April 8. Clara's concert was a triumph. Livy woke up & sent for
her to tell her all about it, near midnight.

But a day or two later she was worse again--then better. The hearts in
that household were as pendulums, swinging always between hope and
despair.

One familiar with the Clemens history might well have been filled with
forebodings. Already in January a member of the family, Mollie Clemens,
Orion's wife, died, news which was kept from Mrs. Clemens, as was the
death of Aldrich's son, and that of Sir Henry M. Stanley, both of which
occurred that spring.

Indeed, death harvested freely that year among the Clemens friendships.
Clemens wrote