Letter XXXIV

Dearest: We were to have gone down with the rest into Florence
yesterday: but soft miles of Italy gleamed too invitingly away on our
right, and I saw Arthur's eyes hungry with the same far-away wish. So I
said "Prato," and he ran up to the fattore's and secured a wondrous
shandry-dan with just space enough between its horns to toss the two of
us in the direction where we would go. Its gaunt framework was painted
of a bright red, and our feet had only netting to rest on: so
constructed, the creature was most vital and light of limb, taking every
rut on the road with flea-like agility. Oh, but it was worth it!

We had a drive of fourteen miles through hills and villages, and
castellated villas with gardens shut in by formidably high walls--always,
a charm: a garden should always have something of the jealous seclusion of
a harem. I am getting Italian landscape into my system, and enjoy it more
and more.

Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down
parts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron of
cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a
bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye ways
bristling with agitated horns.

The cathedral is little and good: damaged, of course, wherever the last
three centuries have laid hands on it. At the corner of the west front
is an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over its
head. The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite
round or quite flat, and proportions good always. An upholstered priest
coming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and
ugly in look and costume. The best-behaved people are the low-down
beggars, who are most decoratively devotional.