We are here till April.

[Footnote 169:  Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.]

To Mrs. Jameson Florence:  December 1847.

Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of me, whether or not we had any in thinking ourselves deeply injured creatures by your last silence.  Yet when in your letter which came at last, you said, ‘Write directly,’ I meant to write directly; I did not take out my vengeance in a foregone malice, be very sure.  Just at the time we were in a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance we managed (that is I did, for altogether it was my fault) to take two apartments in the course of ten days, each for a term of six months, getting out of one of them by leaving the skirts of our garments, rent, literally, in the hand of the proprietor.  You have heard most of this, I dare say, from Mr. Kenyon or my sisters.  Now, too, you are aware of our being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze.  Our rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the very eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have a cook in the house who takes the office of traiteur on him and gives us English mutton chops at Florentine prices, both of us quite well and in spirits, and (though you never will believe this) happier than ever.  For my own part, you know I need not say a word if it were not true, and I must say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical ‘moon’ growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any stars at all:  the only differences which have touched me being the more and more happiness.  It would have been worse than unreasonable if in marrying I had expected one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I did not, to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of horror, seeing that this is not heaven after all.  We live just as we did when you knew us, just as shut-up a life.  Robert never goes anywhere except to take a walk with Flush, which isn’t my fault, as you may imagine:  he has not been out one evening of the fifteen months; but what with music and books and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days go, it’s such a gallop on the grass.  We are going through some of old Sacchetti’s novelets now:  characteristic work for Florence, if somewhat dull elsewhere.  Boccaccios can’t be expected to spring up with the vines in rows, even in this climate.  We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola’s poems the other day, very flat and cold, they did not catch fire when he was burnt.  The most poetic thing in the book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of it.  You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and Robert will tell you of the divine Apollino which you missed seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which I shall be set face to face before, some day soon, I hope....