The trunks are being packed, the gérant apparently superintending operations, as I hear a great deal of conversation in the anteroom. Madame Hubert has an extraordinary faculty for getting all she wants--an excellent quality in a travelling maid. As you know she is very pretty, which again carries out my favourite theory that beauty is the most important gift for a woman. I daresay it won't bear discussion, and I ought to say "goodness," but my experience points the other way. I have so often heard father quote Madame de Staël (who was very kind to him when he was a young man in Paris) who, at the very height of her triumph as the great woman's intelligence of her time, said to him one evening at a big party in Paris, looking at Madame Récamier, who was beautiful, and surrounded by all that was most distinguished and brilliant in the room, "Je donnerai toute mon intelligence pour avoir sa beauté." I am so sorry to go--though of course I shall be glad to see you all, but we have enjoyed ourselves so much. I wonder when I shall see it all again, and I also wonder what makes the great charm of Rome. It appeals to so many people of perfectly different tastes. W. has been perfectly happy and interested (and in many things, not only in inscriptions and antiquities) and I am sure such an absolute change of life and scenes was the best rest he could have after the very fatiguing life of the last two years. Sunday, April 19, 1880, 10 o'clock. We have just come in from our farewell dinner with Gert, our last in Rome, or rather my last. I go to Florence to-morrow morning, but W. stays on till Tuesday. He is going to dine at the Wimpffens to-morrow night with some colleagues and political people. He has stopped downstairs to finish his cigar and give directions about some books he wants sent to Paris, and I will finish this letter. I have nothing to do--the trunks are all packed, some already downstairs, and the salon looks quite bare and uncomfortable, notwithstanding some flowers which Mrs. Bruce and Trocchi have sent for good-bye.