_Chimes_--What the
Writing of it cost Him--Wild Weather--Coming to
London--Secret of the Visit--The Tale
finished--Proposed Travel.

IN the last week of September they moved from Albaro into Genoa, amid a
violent storm of wind and wet, "great guns blowing," the lightning
incessant, and the rain driving down in a dense thick cloud. But the
worst of the storm was over when they reached the Peschiere. As they
passed into it along the stately old terraces, flanked on either side
with antique sculptured figures, all the seven fountains were playing in
its gardens, and the sun was shining brightly on its groves of camellias
and orange-trees.

It was a wonderful place, and I soon became familiar with the several
rooms that were to form their home for the rest of their stay in Italy.
In the centre was the grand sala, fifty feet high, of an area larger
than "the dining-room of the Academy," and painted, walls and ceiling,
with frescoes three hundred years old, "as fresh as if the colours had
been laid on yesterday." On the same floor as this great hall were a
drawing-room, and a dining-room,[88] both covered also with frescoes
still bright enough to make them thoroughly cheerful, and both so nicely
proportioned as to give to their bigness all the effect of snugness.[89]
Out of these opened three other chambers that were turned into
sleeping-rooms and nurseries. Adjoining the sala, right and left, were
the two best bedrooms; "in size and shape like those at Windsor-castle
but greatly higher;" both having altars, a range of three windows with
stone balconies, floors tesselated in patterns of black and white stone,
and walls painted every inch: on the left, nymphs pursued by satyrs "as
large as life and as wicked;" on the right, "Phaeton larger than life,
with horses bigger than Meux and Co.'s, tumbling headlong down into the
best bed." The right-hand one he occupied with his wife, and of the left
took possession as a study; writing behind a big screen he had lugged
into it, and placed by one of the windows, from which he could see over
the city, as he wrote, as far as the lighthouse in its harbour. Distant
little over a mile as the crow flew, flashing five times in four
minutes, and on dark nights, as if by magic, illuminating brightly the
whole palace-front every time it shone, this lighthouse was one of the
wonders of Genoa.

[Illustration]

When it had all become more familiar to him, he was fond