st scenes, the same attraction
that they have in the works of the Primitives), I moved swiftly--so as
to arrive, as soon as might be, at the table that was spread for me,
with fruit and a flask of Chianti--across a Ponte Vecchio heaped with
jonquils, narcissi and anemones. That (for all that I was still in
Paris) was what I saw, and not what was actually round about me. Even
from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries for
which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our
true life than the country in which we may happen to be. Doubtless, if,
at that time, I had paid more attention to what was in my mind when I
pronounced the words "going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice,"
I should have realised that what I saw was in no sense a town, but
something as different from anything that I knew, something as delicious
as might be for a human race whose whole existence had passed in a
series of late winter afternoons, that inconceivable marvel, a morning
in spring. These images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my
nights and days, differentiated this period in my life from those which
had gone before it (and might easily have been confused with it by
an observer who saw things only from without, that is to say, who saw
nothing), as in an opera a fresh melody introduces a novel atmosphere
which one could never have suspected if one had done no more than
read the libretto, still less if one had remained outside the theatre,
counting only the minutes as they passed. And besides, even from the
point of view of mere quantity, in our life the days are not all equal.
To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as
mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different 'speeds.' There are
mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to
pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt,
singing as one goes. During this month--in which I went laboriously
over, as over a tune, though never to my satisfaction, these visions of
Florence, Venice, Pisa, from which the desire that they excited in me
drew and kept something as profoundly personal as if it had been
love, love for another person--I never ceased to believe that they
corresponded to a reality independent of myself, and they made me
conscious of as glorious a hope as could have been cherished by a
Christian in the primitive age of faith, on the eve of his entry into
Parad