Letter XLI

Also there is one beautiful Tobias and the Angel there by a painter
whose name I most ungratefully forget. I saw a man yesterday carrying
fishes in the market, each strung through the gills on a twig of myrtle:
that is how Tobias ought to carry his fish: when a native custom
suggests old paintings, how charming it always is!

Riva.

We have just got here from Verona. In the matter of the garden at least
it is a Paradise of a place. A great sill of honeysuckle leans out from
my window: beyond is a court grown round with creepers, and beyond that
the garden--such a garden! The first thing one sees is an arcade of
vines upon stone pillars, between which peep stacks of roses, going off
a little from their glory now, and right away stretches an alley of
green, that shows at the end, a furlong off, the blue glitter of water.
It is a beautifully wild garden: grass and vegetables and trees and
roses all grow in a jungle together. There are little groves of bamboo
and chestnut and willow; and a runnel of water is somewhere--I can hear
it. It suggests rest, which I want; and so, for all its difference,
suggests you, whom also I want,--more, I own it now, than I have said!
But that went without saying, Beloved, as it always must if it is to be
the truth and nothing short of the truth.