* It had not been merely a case of relaxed sore-throat.
There was an abscess, which burst during this first night of
sleep.


May 28.

'. . . And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last,
little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was, to get to England
as much in summer as possible, the expense of the intermediate journeys
making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, it
appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way
of taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment and furnish it
would leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the
first year in exchange for our outlay, and all but a free residence
afterwards, the cheapness of furniture being quite fabulous at the
present crisis. . . . In fact we have really done it magnificently, and
planted ourselves in the Guidi Palace in the favourite suite of the last
Count (his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom). Though we
have six beautiful rooms and a kitchen, three of them quite palace rooms
and opening on a terrace, and though such furniture as comes by slow
degrees into them is antique and worthy of the place, we yet shall have
saved money by the end of this year. . . . Now I tell you all this lest
you should hear dreadful rumours of our having forsaken our native land,
venerable institutions and all, whereas we remember it so well (it's a
dear land in many senses), that we have done this thing chiefly in order
to make sure of getting back comfortably, . . . a stone's throw, too, it
is from the Pitti, and really in my present mind I would hardly exchange
with the Grand Duke himself. By the bye, as to street, we have no
spectators in windows in just the grey wall of a church called San