_Dec. 15th_.--

What a goose I am, and to think I am twenty-four, and known in
literature! In my long walks I have composed to a tune (I don't know
what it is) which all the people are singing and whistling in the
street at present, a poem in frightful Italian, beginning "Medea, mia
dea," calling on her in the name of her various lovers. I go about
humming between my teeth, "Why am I not Marcantonio? or Prinzivalle? or
he of Narni? or the good Duke Alfonso? that I might be beloved by thee,
Medea, mia dea," &c. &c. Awful rubbish! My landlord, I think, suspects
that Medea must be some lady I met while I was staying by the seaside.
I am sure Sora Serafina, Sora Lodovica, and Sora Adalgisa--the three
Parcae or _Norns_, as I call them--have some such notion. This
afternoon, at dusk, while tidying my room, Sora Lodovica said to me,
"How beautifully the Signorino has taken to singing!" I was scarcely
aware that I had been vociferating, "Vieni, Medea, mia dea," while the
old lady bobbed about making up my fire. I stopped; a nice reputation I
shall get! I thought, and all this will somehow get to Rome, and thence
to Berlin. Sora Lodovica was leaning out of the window, pulling in the
iron hook of the shrine-lamp which marks Sor Asdrubale's house. As she
was trimming the lamp previous to swinging it out again, she said in
her odd, prudish little way, "You are wrong to stop singing, my son"
(she varies between calling me Signor Professore and such terms of
affection as "Nino," "Viscere mie," &c.); "you are wrong to stop
singing, for there is a young lady there in the street who has actually
stopped to listen to you."

I ran to the window. A woman, wrapped in a black shawl, was standing in
an archway, looking up to the window.