Finished on Saturday evening. Oh--this thread of silk--And to post!!
After all you must wait till Tuesday. I have no silk within reach and
shall miss the post. Do forgive me.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday Evening.
This is the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a
few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ...
and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk
if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks
meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ...
fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of
my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper
fast, ... and the post to boot. So wisely I shut my letter, (after
unwisely having driven everything to the last moment!)--and now I have
silk to tie fast with ... to tie a 'nodus' ... 'dignus' of the
celestial interposition--and a new packet shall be ready to go to you
directly.
At last I remember to tell you that the first letter you had from me
this week, was forgotten, (not by _me_) forgotten, and detained, so,
from the post--a piece of carelessness which Wilson came to confess to
me too frankly for me to grumble as I should have done otherwise.
For the staying longer, I did not mean to say you were wrong not to
stay. In the first place you were keeping your father 'in a maze,' as
you said yourself--and then, even without that, I never know what
o'clock it is ... never. Mr. Kenyon tells me that I must live in a
dream--which I do--time goes ... seeming to go round rather than go
forward. The watch I have, broke its spring two years ago, and there I
leave it in the drawer--and the clocks all round strike out of
hearing, or at best, when the wind brings the sound, one upon another
in a confusion. So you know more of time than I do or can.
Till Monday then! I send the 'Ricordi' to take care of the rest ... of
mine. It is a touching story--and there is an impracticable nobleness
from end to end in the spirit of it. How _slow_ (to the ear and mind)
that Italian rhetoric is! a language for dreamers and declaimers. Yet
Dante made it for action, and Machiavelli's prose can walk and strike
as well as float and faint.