I told my good friend Mr. Plunkett (he had then become the English representative at the Court of Tuscany), that I wanted to be married the next day. "All right!" said he; "will ten o'clock do?" "Could not be better!" "Very good! Tell Robbins [the then English clergyman] I'll be sure to be there." So at ten the next morning we looked in at the Palazzo Ximenes, and in about ten minutes the business was done! Of Mr. Robbins, who was as kind and good a little man as could be, I may note, since I have been led to speak of him, the following rather singular circumstance. He was, as I have been told, the son of a Devonshire farmer, and his two sisters were the wives of two of the principal Florentine nobles, one having married the Marchese Inghirami and the other the Marchese Bartolomei. What circumstances led to the accomplishment of a destiny apparently so strange for the family of a Devonshire farmer, I never heard. The clergyman and his sisters were all much my seniors. After the expeditious ceremony we all--about half a score of us--went off to breakfast at the house of Mr. Garrow in the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, and before noon my wife and I were off on a ramble among the Tuscan cities. CHAPTER X. My very old friend, Colonel Grant--General Grant many years before he died--used to say that if he wished without changing his place himself, to see the greatest possible number of his friends and acquaintances, he should stand perpetually at the foot of the column in the Place Vendôme. But it seems to me that at least as advantageous a post of observation for the purpose would be the foot of Giotto's tower in Florence! Who in these days lives and dies without going to Florence; and who goes to Florence without going to gaze on the most perfectly beautiful tower that human hands ever raised? Let me tell (quite parenthetically) a really good story of that matchless building, which yet however will hardly be appreciated at its full value by those who have never yet seen it. When the Austrian troops were occupying Florence, one of the white-coated officers had planted himself in the Piazza in front of the tower, and was gazing at it earnestly, lost in admiration of its perfect beauty. "_Si svita, signore_," said a little street urchin, coming up behind him--"It _unscrews_, sir!" As much as to say, "Wouldn't you like just to take it off bodily and carry it away?" But, as I said, to apprehend the aptitude of the _gamin's_ sneer, one must have oneself looked on the absolute perfection of proportion and harmony of its every part, which really does suggest the idea that the whole might be lifted bodily in one piece from its place on the soil Whether the Austrian had the wit to answer "You are blundering, boy! you are taking me for a Frenchman," I don't know!