watchfulness, lest she
should dash her foot against a stone, was _never_ absent from his
mind. She had become his real self, his genuine _ego_ to all intents
and purposes. And his talk and thoughts were egoistic accordingly. Of
his own person, his ailments, his works, his ideas, his impressions,
you might hear not a word from him in the intercourse of many days.
But there was in his inmost heart a _naif_ and never-doubting faith
that talk on all these subjects as regarded _her_ must be profoundly
interesting to those he talked with. To me, at all events, it was so.
Perhaps had it been otherwise, there would have been less of it.

We were to reach Camaldoli the first night, and had therefore to
leave Florence very early in the morning. At Pelago, a little
_paese_--village we should call it--on the Arno some fourteen or
fifteen miles above Florence, we were to find saddle-horses, the
journey we were about to make being in those days practicable in no
other way, unless on foot. There was at that time a certain Antonio da
Pelago, whose calling it was to act as guide, and to furnish horses.
I had known him for many years, as did all those whose ramblings took
them into those hills. He was in many respects what people call
"a character," and seemed to fancy himself to have in some degree
proprietary rights over the three celebrated Tuscan monasteries,
Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Vernia. He was well known to the
friars at each of these establishments, and indeed to all the sparse
population of that country-side. He was a very good and competent
guide and courier, possessed with a very amusingly exaggerated notion
of his own importance, and rather bad to turn aside from his own
preconceived and predetermined methods of doing everything that had to
be done. George Eliot at once made a study of him.

I am reminded, too, as I write, of the great amusement with which my
old and highly-valued friend of many years, Alfred Austin, who long
subsequently was making the same excursion with me and both our wives,
listened to an oration of the indispensable Antonio. One of his
baggage horses had strayed and become temporarily lost among the
hills. He was exceedingly wroth, and poured forth his vexation in
a torrent of very unparliamentary language. "_Corpo di Guida!_"
he exclaimed, among a curious assortment of heterogeneous
adjurations--"Body of Judas!" stooping to the ground as he spoke, and
striking the back of his hand against it