perpetual rivalry with that of Paris and London; and in Florence, an
English nobility that had come in quest of sunlight and a chance to air
its straw hats, show off the fair hair of its ladies, and chatter its
own language in gardens where once upon a time the somber Dante dreamed
and Boccaccio told his merry tales to drive fear of plague away.

That journey, of impressions as rapid and as fleeting as a reel of
moving-pictures, leaving in Rafael's mind a maze of names, buildings,
paintings and cities, served to give greater breadth to his thinking, as
well as added stimulus to his imagination. Wider still became the gulf
that separated him from the people and ideas he met in his common
everyday life. He felt a longing for the extraordinary, for the
original, for the adventuresomeness of artistic youth; and political
master of a county, heir of a feudal dominion virtually, he nevertheless
would read the name of any writer or painter whatsoever with the
superstitious respect of a rustic churl. "A wretched, ruined lot who
haven't even a bed to die on," his mother viewed such people; but Rafael
nourished a secret envy for all who lived in that ideal world, which he
was certain must be filled with pleasures and exciting things he had
scarcely dared to dream of. What would he not give to be a bohemian like
the personages he met in the books of Murger, member of a merry band of
"intellectuals," leading a life of joy and proud devotion to higher
things in a bourgeois age that knew only thirst for money and prejudice
of class! Talent for saying pretty things, for writing winged verses
that soared like larks to heaven! A garret underneath the roof, off
there in Paris, in the Latin Quarter! A Mimí poor but spiritual, who
would love him, and--between one kiss and another--be able to
discuss--not the price of oranges, like the girls who followed him with
tender eyes at home--but serious "elevated" things! In exchange for all
that he would gladly have given his future deputyship and all the