to people as
the vulgar public do. If they bore you, say so, and they'll go away.
That is the right state of things.

How am I to know that _I_ don't bore you, when _I_ come, when you're
so civil to people you hate?

[Footnote 11: Spanish chapel in S. Maria Novella.]

* * * * *

PASS OF BOCCHETTA, _1st October_ (1874).

* * * * * *

All that is lovely and wonderful in the Alps may be seen without the
slightest danger, in general, and it is especially good for little
girls of eleven who can't climb, to know this--all the best views of
hills are at the bottom of them. I know one or two places indeed where
there is a grand peeping over precipices, one or two where the
mountain seclusion and strength are worth climbing to see. But all the
entirely beautiful things I could show you, Susie; only for the very
highest sublime of them sometimes asking you to endure half an hour of
_chaise a porteurs_, but mostly from a post-chaise or smoothest of
turnpike roads.

But, Susie, do you know, I'm greatly horrified at the penwipers of
peacocks' feathers! _I_ always use my left-hand coat-tail, indeed, and
if only I were a peacock and a pet of yours, how you'd scold me!

Sun just coming out over sea (at Sestri), which is sighing in towards
the window, within your drive, round before the door's breadth of
it,[12] seen between two masses of acacia copse and two orange trees at
the side of the inn courtyard.

[Footnote 12: That is, within that distance of the window.--J. R.]

* * * * *

GENEVA, _19th October_ (1874).

How I have been neglecting you! Perhaps Joanie may have told you that
just at my last gasp of hand-work, I had to write quite an unexpected
number of letters. But poor Joanie will think herself neglected now,
for I have been stopped among the Alps by a state of their glaciers
entirely unexampled, and shall be a week after my "latest possible"
day, in getting home. It is eleven years since I was here, and very
sad to me to return, yet delightful with a moonlight paleness of the
past, precious of its kind.

I shall be at home with Joan in ten days now, God willing. I have much
to tell you, which will give you pleasure and pain; but I don't know
how much it will be--to tell you--for a little while yet, so I don't
begin.

* * * * *