I am glad it is over. The whole scene was one of quarrelling, row, and animosity from beginning to end. These people neither know how to win money nor to lose it; and as to the English who figure on such occasions, take my word for it, Bob, the national character gains little by their alliance. It is too soon for me, perhaps, to pronounce in this fashion, but Tiverton has told me so many little private histories--revealed so much of the secret memoirs of these folk--that I believe I am speaking what subsequent experience will amply confirm. For the present, good-bye, and believe me, Ever yours, James Dodd. LETTER XXVI. KENNY DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., ORANGE, BRUFF. Florence, Lungo l'Arno. My dear Tom,--It is nigh a month since I wrote to you last, and if I didn't "steal a few hours from the night, my dear," it might be longer still. The address will tell you where we are,--I wish anybody or anything else would tell you how or why we came here! I intended to have gone back from Genoa, nor do I yet understand what prevented me doing so. My poor head--none of the clearest in what may be called my lucid intervals--is but a very indifferent thinking machine when harassed, worried, and tormented as I have been latterly. You have heard how James's Countess, the Cardinal's niece and the betrothed of a Neapolitan Prince, turned out to be a circus woman, one of those bits of tawdry gold fringe and pink silk pantaloons that dance on a chalked saddle to a one-shilling multitude! By good fortune she had two husbands living, or she might have married the boy. As it was, he has gone into all manner of debt on her account; and if it was not that I can defy ruin in any shape,--for certain excellent reasons you may guess at,--this last exploit of his would go nigh to our utter destruction. We hurried away out of Genoa in shame, and came on here by slow stages. The womenkind plucked up wonderfully on the way, and I believe of the whole party your humble servant alone carried abasement with him inside the gates of Florence. My sense of sorrow and shame probably somehow blunted my faculties and dulled my reasoning powers, for I would seem to have concurred in a vast number of plans and arrangements that now, when I have come to myself, strike me with intense astonishment. For instance, we have taken a suite of rooms on the Arno, hired a cook, a carriage, and a courier; we are, I hear, also in negotiation for a box at the "Pergola," and I am credibly informed that I am myself looking out for saddle-horses for the girls, and a "stout-made, square-jointed cob of lively action," to carry myself.