Dearest: This letter will travel with me: we leave to-day. Our
movements are to be too restless and uncomfortable for the next few days
for me to have a chance of quiet seeing or quiet writing anywhere. At
Riva we shall rest, I hope.
Yesterday a storm began coming over towards evening, and I thought to
myself that if it passed in time there should be a splendid sunset of
smolder and glitter to be seen from the Campanile, and perhaps by good
chance a rainbow.
I went alone: when I got to the top the rain was pelting hard; so there
I stayed happily weather-bound for an hour looking over Venice "silvered
with slants of rain," and watching umbrellas scuttering below with toes
beneath them. The golden smolder was very slow in coming: it lay over
the mainland and came creeping along the railway track. Then came the
glitter and the sun, and I turned round and found my rainbow. But it
wasn't a bow, it was a circle: the Campanile stood up as it were a
spoke in the middle,--the lower curve of the rainbow lay on the ground
of the Piazzetta, cut off sharp by the shadow of the Campanile. It was
worth waiting an hour to see. The islands shone mellow and bright in the
clearance with the storm going off black behind them. Good-by, Venice!
* * * * *
Verona began by seeming dull to me; but it improves and unfolds beautiful
corners of itself to be looked at: only I am given so little time. The
Tombs of the Della Scalas and the Renaissance façade of the Consiglio are
what chiefly delight me. I had some quiet hours in the Museo, where I fell
in love with a little picture by an unknown painter, of Orpheus charming
the beasts in a wandering green landscape, with a dance of fauns in the
distance, and here and there Eurydice running;--and Orpheus in Hades, and
the Thracian women killing him, and a crocodile fishing out his head, and
mermaids and ducks sitting above their reflections reflecting.
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.
While this has been waiting to go, your letter has been put into my hands.
I am too happy to say words about it, and can afford now to let this go as
it is. The little time of waiting for you will be perfect happiness now;
and your coming seems to color all that is behind as well. I have had a
good time indeed, and was only wearying with the plethora of my enjoyment:
but the better time has been kept till now. We shall be together day after
day and all day long for at least a month, I hope: a joy that has never
happened to us yet.
Never mind about the lost letter now, dearest, dearest: Venice was a
little empty just one week because of it. I still hope it will come; but
what matter?--I know _you_ will. All my heart waits for you.--Your most
glad and most loving.