in my devotion, she could not understand my behaviour. Was it
surprising, then, if I felt that I must find her at all costs? Was it
wonderful that I wished her to know of my repentance, or that I wished
to repair my wrong-doings? For eight months I had enjoyed daily and
hourly communion with her--and I don't pretend to say that the horrible
loss of that had a good deal to do with my precipitate departure, any
more than that the hope of finding her was what gave the spring to my
feet and brought back the young blood to my heart. No pilgrim to Loretto
or Compostella more longingly set his eyes to where he believed his
hopes to lie than did I watch for the first sign of the Apennines, which
barred my way to Siena. Having thus briefly defended myself against
misconception, I shall say no more on that head.

After my first night under the stars--wondrous night of wakefulness and
hopeful music, throughout which I lay entranced at the foot of a wooded
hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and
firefly--I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction
against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul,
is no remedy, or very little. Crossing the hills, over burning roads,
through thorny brakes or by slopes of harsh grass, my heels and the
balls of my toes became alarmingly inflamed; and an acacia-spine,
lodging in the sole of one foot, made matters no better. That second day
of mine I could barely hobble twelve miles, and nothing but resolution
could do that much for me. The night came and found me ill; I slept not;
though I had provided myself with food, I could not touch it. Luckily, I
was discovered by some shepherd boys early in the morning and directed
to the town of Rovigo at some half a league's distance, where they said
there was a hospital.

Seeing that my foot was now so bad that the touch of a hand upon it was