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The famed miracles of San Giovanni Gualberto added little, in our eyes, to the interest of Vallombrosa, but there were reverence and inspiration in the names of Dante, Milton, and Ariosto. We left Florence early, taking the way that leads from the Porta della Croce, up the north bank of the Arno.
Permission was given, and I made the pilgrimage to Vallombrosa and Camaldoli, incessantly singing psalms and saying prayers to the honour and glory of God. On my return there were great differences between the duke and myself as to the reward to be given me for the statue of Perseus, during which the duchess and the sculptor Bandinello interposed.
What the Dublin police-sergeant said of John Bull may also be said of the Ulsterman "He may have faults, but he Pays!" Funds for current purposes are readily forthcoming, £50,000 being already in hand, while promises of a whole year's income seem thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.
To say the truth, my time for enjoying this country life, except the enchanting silence and the look from the window, has not come yet: I must wait for a little more strength. He is rather a town baby.... Our drawback is, dear Miss Blagden, that we have not room to take you in. So sorry we both are indeed. Write and tell me whether you have decided about Vallombrosa.
The church of San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look through the sunlight or moonlight and take observations. Isn't that pleasant altogether? We ordered back the piano and the book subscription, and settled for two months, and forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the wrong they did us, like secular Christians. What is to come after, I can't tell you.
I scarcely observed it at first, I was so pleased to see one of the old Hillsover girls; and I went on being very cordial. Then Lilly tried to put me down by running over a list of her fine acquaintances, Lady this, and the Marquis of that, people whom she and her mother had known abroad. It made me think of my old autograph book with Antonio de Vallombrosa, and the rest. Do you remember?"
Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to the point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must particularly have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft light in Aurora's eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in Gerald's, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal.
To the west it stretches away unbroken for twenty miles, covered thickly with white villas like a meadow of daisies, magnified. A few miles to the east the plain is rounded with mountains, between whose interlocking bases we can see the brown current of the Arno. Some of their peaks, as well as the mountain of Vallombrosa, along the eastern sky, are tipped with snow.
Every one else within the court had to submit to the razor's fatal edge or feel the czar's more fatal displeasure, and beards fell like "autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa."
Again they sat down and sought to reconcile the apparently conflicting truths of God's mercy and justice, of His severity and unutterable tenderness. Proofs of both were found upon the page of inspiration "as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It was clearly evident that God would make no terms with sin, whatever He might do for the sinner.
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