l you have the
kindness, for my sake, not to fancy _like Robert_?--it being, as he
says himself, the very image of '_a young man at Waterloo House_, in
a moment of inspiration--"A lovely blue, ma'am."' It is as like Robert
as Flush. And now I am going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how
we meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine how we got
up at three in the morning to escape the heat (imagine me!)--and with
all our possessions and a 'dozen of port' (which my husband doses me
with twice a day because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago
by vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by two
white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain. (Robert was on
horseback.) Precisely it must be as you left it. Who can make a road
up a house? We were four hours going five miles, and I with all my
goodwill was dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appetite for the beef
and oil with which we were entertained at the House of Strangers. We
are simple people about diet, and had said over and over that we would
live on eggs and milk and bread and butter during these two months. We
might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven.
The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that
bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's
amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to
a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water
stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you
did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I
said, and the wine too, were liberal and excellent, and we made our
gratitude apparent in Robert's best Tuscan--in spite of which we
were turned out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been
permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No, nothing
could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and; given to sanctity,
and has set his face against women. 'While he is abbot,' he said to
our mediating monk, 'he _will_ be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to
come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid
on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to
sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with
their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but _that_ is uncleanliness
enough--they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was,
I do assure you. I should have liked to stay th