The
talk of worshipping the ground she trod on, and the like, are pretty
lovers phrases, sometimes signifying much, and sometimes very little.
But it is true accurately and literally of Lewes. That care for her,
at once comprehensive and minute, unsleeping watchfulness, lest she
should dash her foot against a stone, was _never_ absent from his
mind. She had become his real self, his genuine _ego_ to all intents
and purposes. And his talk and thoughts were egoistic accordingly. Of
his own person, his ailments, his works, his ideas, his impressions,
you might hear not a word from him in the intercourse of many days.
But there was in his inmost heart a _naif_ and never-doubting faith
that talk on all these subjects as regarded _her_ must be profoundly
interesting to those he talked with. To me, at all events, it was so.
Perhaps had it been otherwise, there would have been less of it.
We were to reach Camaldoli the first night, and had therefore to
leave Florence very early in the morning. At Pelago, a little
_paese_--village we should call it--on the Arno some fourteen or
fifteen miles above Florence, we were to find saddle-horses, the
journey we were about to make being in those days practicable in no
other way, unless on foot. There was at that time a certain Antonio da
Pelago, whose calling it was to act as guide, and to furnish horses.
I had known him for many years, as did all those whose ramblings took
them into those hills.
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