We spent a very pleasant month in Venice. It did Guy good being with the Forresters. He had always been very fond of his cousin, and she seemed to suit him better than any one else now. She would sit by him for hours, talking in her low, caressing tones, that soothed him like a cool soft hand laid on a forehead fever-heated. Isabel was not afraid of him now, but a great awe mingled with her pity.
It is curious, and tells well perhaps for our human nature; neither pride of birth, nor complete success, nor profound wisdom, surrounds a man with such reverence as the being possessed with a great sorrow. At least no one can envy him; and so those who were his enemies once--like the gallant Frenchman when he saw his adversary's empty sleeve--bring their swords to the salute, and pass on.
At last we started for Rome, our party nearly filling two carriages. There are only two ways of traveling: in your own carriage, with courier and fourgon, like Russian or transatlantic noble, or with vetturino. This last mode, which was ours, is scarcely less pleasant, if you are not in a hurry. The charm of having, for a certain period, every care as to ways and means off your mind, compensates for the six-miles-an-hour pace. So we moved slowly southward through Verona, where one thinks more of the Avon than the Adige--where, in tombs poised like Mohammed's coffin, the mighty Scagliari sleep between earth and heaven, as if not quite fit for either--where are the cypresses in the trim old garden, soaring skyward till the eyes that follow grow dizzy, the trees that were green and luxuriant years before the world was redeemed. So through Mantua and Bologna down to Florence, where, I think, the spirits of Catharine and Cosmo linger yet, the women and the men all so soft-toned, and silky, and sinful, and cruel. We did not stay long there, for we had all visited it before once or twice, but kept on our way, by the upper road, to Rome, till we reached our last halting-place--Civita Castellana.
We were gathered round the wood fire after dinner (for the October evenings grew chilly as they closed in); I don't know how it was that Forrester began telling us about their flight.
"You ought to have seen Bella's baggage," he said, at last; "it was so compact. You can't fancy any thing so tiny as the _sac de nuit_. A courier's moneybag would make two of it. Then a vast cloak, and that's all. Quite in light marching order."