in a gentleman living as a gentleman. Marry off your Miss Virginia, who has her wits about her, to your valet, or to anybody else's valet who will take her. Your position with regard to her does you infinite credit with me; but I cannot answer for Madam Aurelia. Or rather, I can answer for her that it will do you precisely the reverse. And--I have a son of my own, remember--inform your father of your whereabouts in Florence. To meet again, Don Francis--addio!" That was a reasonable friendly soul; but it was not to be supposed that she could understand the reverential attitude of a young man to his mistress. CHAPTER XIX I AM AGAIN MISCONCEIVED The aspect of Florence, surveyed from the crags of Fiesole, or from that gentler eyrie of Bellosguardo, is one of the most enchanting visions open to the eye of man, so cunningly have art and nature joined their webbing; but that which can be harvested upon the road from Prato is not at all extraordinary. Suburb there succeeds to dirty suburb, the roads are quags or deep in dust, the company as disagreeable as it is mean. Approaching the city from that side, you neither know that within a short mile of you are the dome of Brunelleschi, the Tower of Giotto, the David of Michael Angelo--nor do you greatly care. At least I did not, being sadly out of spirits, upon that day of rain, steam and weariness, when, with the young Virginia springing by my side, I limped within the Porta al Prato and stood upon the sacred soil of the Second Athens. Quick to feel impressions, too quick to read in them signs and portents, I felt fatality press upon my brows. A little way beyond that Porta al Prato, within the walls, there was, and still is, I believe, a broad neglected field--ragged grass and broken potsherds--surrounded on three sides out of four by shabby houses, taverns and garden walls. It was called the Prato, and by the shocking discrepancy between its name and appearance added to my dejection, for the one recalled and the other mocked memories of that green and sunlit plain in Padua, that dear Pra della Valle, upon whose grassy dimples looked the house of Aurelia, and to whose wandering winds I had so often sighed her name. Here, however, the Marchese Corsini had a casino and loggia, here stood in rows the country coaches from the north and west, awaiting their times of departure; here the Florentines used to hold their horse-races of St. John's day, and here, finally, you could be robbed, strangled or stabbed any night of the year. Yet it boasted at least two convents of nuns among its border of untidy buildings, and was destined, before long, to become of supreme interest to myself. Virginia the shrewd knew that, although I did not.