I wrote two letters which will rather amuse the family as they say I only write when I am boring myself in the country or having a series of rainy days--Janet always calls them my rain letters. However, when I had written two my energy in that line was exhausted, and I felt I couldn't sit another moment in that dark salon, so I summoned Madame Hubert (I don't generally care to have a maid for a companion but I didn't like to walk about the streets of a foreign city alone) and we started off with short skirts and umbrellas. The gérant nearly fell off his high stool in the bureau when he saw me preparing to go out--wanted to send for a carriage, a fiacre, anything--but I told him I really wanted to walk, which filled him with amazement. Italians as a rule don't like walking at all, and he thought I was quite mad to go out deliberately, and for my pleasure, on such a day. It wasn't very pleasant in the streets--everybody's umbrella ran into me, and the pavements were wet and slippery. We finally took refuge under the arcades, but there we got quite as much jostled, for everybody who was out, was there; and the sudden gusts of wind and rain around the corners and through the arches were anything but pleasant. I wasn't at all happy, but I liked it better than sitting in the room at the hotel. I was so draggled and my boots so covered with mud that I was rather ashamed to cross the big hall of the hotel when I came in. I found a letter from Gert saying she was so glad we had such delightful weather for Milan. I wish she could look out of my window at this moment. She wouldn't know if she were in Milan or Elizabethtown. The clouds are very low on the roofs of the houses--the city has disappeared in a mist, I can just see across the street. The pavements are swimming--quite rushing torrents in the gutters, and I look down upon a sea of umbrellas.