And, I am 'going' to Italy. I am
also 'going' up the Nile to the second cataract; and I am 'going' to
Jerusalem, and to India, and likewise to Australia. My only dimness
of perception in this wise is, that I don't know _when_. If I did but
know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present
I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain
farewell readings and a certain new book (just begun) interposing
their dwarfish shadow. But whenever (if ever) I change 'going' into
'coming,' I shall come to see you.
"With kind regards, ever, my dear Trollope,
"Your affectionate friend,
"CHARLES DICKENS."
* * * * *
And those were the last words I ever had from him!
CHAPTER VIII.
In those days--_temporibus illis_, as the historians of long-forgotten
centuries say--there used to be a very general exodus of the English
colony at Florence to the baths of Lucca during the summer months.
Almost all Italians, who can in anywise afford to do so, leave the
great cities nowadays for the seaside, even as those do who have
preceded them in the path of modern luxurious living. But at the time
of which I am writing the Florentines who did so were few, and almost
confined to that inner circle of the fashionable world which partly
lived with foreigners, and had adopted in many respects their modes
and habits. Those Italians, however, who did leave their Florence
homes in the summer, went almost all of them to Leghorn.
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