from, to Hotel de l'Arno, Florence. I must get that
out before the day of judgment, if I can. I'm so glad of your sweet
flatteries in this note received to-day.

* * * * *

FLORENCE, _25th August_ (1874).

I have not been able to write to you, or any one lately, whom I don't
want to tease, except Dr. Brown, whom I write to for counsel. My time
is passed in a fierce steady struggle to save all I can every day, as
a fireman from a smoldering ruin, of history or aspect. To-day, for
instance, I've been just in time to ascertain the form of the cross of
the Emperor, representing the power of the State in the greatest
_political_ fresco of old times--fourteenth century. By next year, it
may be next month, it will have dropped from the wall with the
vibration of the railway outside, and be touched up with new gilding
for the mob.

I am keeping well, but am in a terrible spell (literally, "spell,"
enchanted maze, that I can't get out of) of work.

I _was_ a little scandalized at the idea of your calling the book
"word-painting." My dearest Susie, it is the chief provocation of my
life to be called a "word-painter" instead of a thinker. I hope you
haven't filled your book with descriptions. I thought it was the
thoughts you were looking for?

"Posie" would be pretty. If you ask Joanie she will tell you perhaps
_too_ pretty for _me_, and I can't think a bit to-night, for instead
of robins singing I hear only blaspheming gamesters on the other side
of the narrow street.

* * * * *

FLORENCE, _1st September_ (1874).

Don't be in despair about your book. I am sure it will be lovely. I'll
see to it the moment I get home, but I've got into an entirely
unexpected piece of business here, the interpretation of a large
chapel[11] full of misunderstood, or not at all understood, frescoes;
and I'm terribly afraid of breaking down, so much drawing has to be
done at the same time. It has stranded botany and everything.

I was kept awake half of last night by drunken blackguards howling
on the bridge of the Holy Trinity in the pure half-moonlight. This is
the kind of discord I have to bear, corresponding to your uncongenial
company. But, alas! Susie, you ought at ten years old to have more
firmness, and to resolve that you won't be bored. I think I shall try
to enforce it on you as a very solemn duty not to _lie_