I was afraid, we both were afraid for you, dearest friend, when we saw the clouds gather and heard the rain fall as it did that day at Florence. It seemed impossible that you should be beyond the evil influence, should you have travelled ever so fast; but, after all, a storm in the Apennines, like many a moral storm, will be better perhaps than a calm to look back upon. We talked of you and thought of you, and missed you at coffee time, and regretted that so pleasant a week (for us) should have gone so fast, as fast as a dull week, or, rather, a good deal faster. Dearest friend, do believe that we _felt_ your goodness in Coming to us--in making us an object--before you left Italy; it fills up the measure of goodness and kindness for which we shall thank and love you all our lives. Never fancy that we can forget you or be less touched by the memory of what you have been to us in affection and sympathy--never. And don't _you_ lose sight of _us_; do write often, and do, _do_ make haste and come back to Italy, and then make use of us in any and every possible way as house-takers or house-mates, for we are ready to accept the lowest place or the highest. The week you gave us would be altogether bright and glad if it had not been for the depression and anxiety on your part. May God turn it all to gain and satisfaction in some unlooked-for way. To be a _road-maker_ is weary work, even across the Apennines of life. We have not science enough for it if we have strength, which we haven't either. Do you remember how Sindbad shut his eyes and let himself be carried over the hills by an eagle? _That_ was better than to set about breaking stones. Also what you could do you have done; you have finished your part, and the sense of a fulfilled duty is in itself satisfying--is and must be. My sympathies go with you entirely, while I wish your dear Gerardine to be happy; I wish it from my heart.... Just after you left us arrived our box with the precious deeds, which are thrown into the cabinet for want of witnesses. And then Robert has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of _Shakespeare's birthday_, and overflowing with kindness really both to himself and me. It quite touched me, that letter. Also we have had a visitation from an American, but on the point of leaving Florence and very tame and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own 'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you? I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls, and in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in the evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash. The Duomo is more