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Updated: June 3, 2025
The former inmates’ cells, wherein the brown-robed brethren of the Order of St Francis until lately were wont to pass their placid uneventful lives, afford comfortable if somewhat limited accommodation; whilst the covered loggia that runs the whole length of the cells has been turned into a series of delightful little sitting-rooms, their broad arc-shaped windows facing full south, a boon that only a winter resident in Italy can properly appreciate.
There was not a tree there that I did not climb, and one, a widespreading Portugal laurel, was my private country house. I had there my bedroom and my sitting-rooms, my study, and my larder. The larder was supplied by the fruit-trees, from which I was free to pick as I would, and in the study I would sit for hours with some favorite book Milton's "Paradise Lost" the chief favorite of all.
I know what I shall do. I must take new lodgings, for the girls and myself, all in the same house. We must have two sitting-rooms; then you will come to my room without any difficulty. These astonishing proprieties are so easily satisfied after all. 'You will really do that? 'Yes. I shall go and look for rooms to-morrow. Then when you come you can always ask for Maud or Dora, you know.
Half an hour later we landed, though the rain still came down in sheets, but the steamer was now alongside the pier, and close carriages had been provided. A few minutes' drive through ill-paved streets brought us to the Hotel Universel, a handsome, spacious building, with marble courtyards, full of trees, plants, and flowers, into which all the sitting-rooms open.
Writing in the seventeenth century, Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, remarks that 'Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else, beside their household business or to play with their children, to drive away time but to dally with their cats, which they have in delitiis, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs. It is not the least merit of the cat that it has banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of humanity the monkey tribe; and as to the little dogs Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, although we are not insensible to their many virtues and utilities, we care not to see them sleeping on our hearth-rug, or reposing beside our work-tables.
To escape the curious eyes of the servants, who now seemed to be in every room and to be regarding her with not unnatural curiosity, Eleanor wandered out into the hall again and resumed the restless pacing to and fro which she had kept up the greater part of the night. By eight o'clock she seemed to have the principal sitting-rooms to herself.
Then, becoming bold by success, they turned to cabinet making, and built into the dining-room a sideboard, which was only a glorified edition of the kitchen dresser, but looked amazingly like walnut, aided by a little stain; and for both sitting-rooms made low cupboards, with tops wide enough to serve as little tables.
But that house wasn't it made out of a stable? It has got six rooms, I know three bedrooms up-stairs, and two sitting-rooms and a kitchen below. With one good maid and a boy Julie could be perfectly comfortable. She would earn four hundred pounds Dr. Meredith has promised her she has one hundred pounds a year of her own. She would pay no rent, of course.
Whether the soldiers fell into the same mistake, or were too polite to take notice of it, we cannot tell, for they drank it without comment, and with evident satisfaction, like men of simple tastes and uncritical minds. We turn now to a very different scene. In one of the private sitting-rooms of the Institute sat poor young Mrs Martin, the very embodiment of blank despair.
It was the home, more than 300 years ago, of a printer called Plantin, who made a great fortune, and whose descendants took the name of Moretus, and carried on the business for a long time. You will see there the types and printing-presses of the sixteenth century, and also the very furniture of the sitting-rooms and bedrooms, just as they were in those bygone days.
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