It was some time before he volunteered another suggestion, which was that the Italians along this part of the coast had a poor region to farm. I got up and left presently because I did not want to have anything to do with his wife. I was afraid that I might have to talk to her, which seemed to me a ghastly prospect. I sat in my berth and read the history of art as it related to Florence, Genoa, and Pisa, interrupting my paragraphs with glances at every interesting scene. The value of the prospect changed first from one side of the train to the other, and I went out into the corridor to open a window and look out. We passed through a valley where it looked as though grapes were flourishing splendidly, and my Englishman came out and told me the name of the place, saying that it was good wine that was made there. He was determined to talk to me whether I would or no, and so I decided to make the best of it. It just occurred to me that he might be the least bit lonely, and, seeing that I was very curious about the country through which we were passing, that he might know something about Italy. The moment it dawned upon me that he might be helpful to me in this respect I began to ask him questions, and I found his knowledge to be delightfully wide. He knew Italy thoroughly. As we proceeded he described how the country was divided into virtually three valleys, separated by two mountain ranges, and what the lines of its early, almost prehistoric, development, had been. He knew where it was that Shelley had come to spend his summers, and spots that had been preferred by Browning and other famous Englishmen. He talked of the cities that lie in a row down the center of Italy--Perugia, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Piacenza and Milan--of the fact that Italy had no educational system whatsoever and that the priests were bitterly opposed to it. He was sorry that I was not going to stop at Spezia, because at Spezia the climate was very mild and the gulf very beautiful. He was delighted to think that I was going to stop at Pisa and see the cathedral and the Baptistery. He commented on the charms of Genoa--commercialized as it had been these later years--saying that there was a very beautiful Campo Santo and that some of the palaces of the quarreling Guelphs and Ghibellines still remaining were well worth seeing. When we passed the quarries of Carrara he told me of their age and of how endless the quantity of marble still was. He was going to Rome with his wife and he wanted to know if I would not look him up, giving me the name of a hotel where he lived by the season. I caught a note of remarkable erudition; for we fell to discussing religion and priestcraft and the significance of government generally, and he astonished me by the breadth of his knowledge. We passed to the subject of metaphysics from which all religions spring; and then I saw how truly philosophic and esoteric he was. His mind knew no country, his knowledge no school.