stop and kneel before Brigitte who would call me an idler, saying that
she had to do all the work, and that I was good for nothing; and all
sorts of projects flitted through our minds. Sicily was far away, but
the winters are so delightful there! Genoa is very pretty with its
painted houses, its green gardens, and the Apennines in the background!
But what noise! What crowds! Among every three men on the street, one
is a monk and another a soldier. Florence is sad, it is the Middle Ages
living in the midst of modern life. How can any one endure those grilled
windows and that horrible brown color with which all the houses are
tinted?

What could we do at Rome? We were not travelling in order to forget
ourselves, much less for the sake of instruction. To the Rhine? But the
season was over, and although we did not care for the world of fashion,
still it is sad to visit its haunts when it has fled. But Spain? Too
many restrictions there; one travels like an army on the march, and may
expect everything except repose. Switzerland? Too many people go there,
and most of them are deceived as to the nature of its attractions; but in
that land are unfolded the three most beautiful colors on God's earth:
the azure of the sky, the verdure of the plains, and the whiteness of the
snows on the summits of glaciers.

"Let us go, let us go!" cried Brigitte, "let us fly away like two birds.
Let us pretend, my dear Octave, that we met each other only yesterday.
You met me at a ball, I pleased you and I love you; you tell me that some
leagues distant, in a certain little town, you loved a certain Madame
Pierson; what passed between you and her I do not know. You will not
tell me the story of your love for another! And I will whisper to you
that not long since I loved a terrible fellow who made me very unhappy;
you will reprove me and close my mouth, and we will agree never to speak