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Here was the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that presaged the first connubial hurricane. A married friend–one of much experience and long-suffering–had warned me of this, saying, “Don’t fancy you’ll escape, old fellow; but do the way the Ministry do about Turkey–put the evil day off; diplomatise, promise, cajole, threaten a bit if needs be, but postpone;” and, strong with these precepts, I negotiated, as the phrase is, and, with a dash of reckless liberality that I tremble at now as I record it, I said, “You’ve only to say where–nothing but where to, and I’ll take you–up the Rhine, down the Danube, Egypt, the Cataracts——“

“I don’t want to go so far,” said she, dryly. “Italy will do.”

This was a stunner. I hoped the impossible would have stopped her, but she caught at the practicable, and foiled me.

“There’s only one objection,” said I, musing.

“And what may that be? Not money, I hope.”

“Heaven forbid–no. It’s the language. We get on here tolerably well, for the waiter speaks broken English; but in Italy, dearest, English is unknown.”

“Let us learn Italian, then. My aunt Groves said I had a remarkable talent for languages.”

I groaned inwardly at this, for the same aunt Groves had vouched for a sum of seventeen hundred and odd pounds as her niece’s fortune, but which was so beautifully “tied up,” as they called it, that neither Chancellor nor Master were ever equal to the task of untying it.

“Of course, dearest, let us learn Italian;” and I thought how I’d crush a junior counsel some day with a smashing bit of Dante.

We started that same night–travelled on day after day–crossed Mont Cenis in a snow-storm, and reached the Feder as wayworn and wretched-looking a pair as ever travelled on an errand of bliss and beatitude.

“In for a penny” is very Irish philosophy, but I can’t help that; so I wrote to my brother Peter to sell out another hundred for me out of the “Threes,” saying “dear Paulina’s health required a little change to a milder climate” (it was snowing when I wrote, and the thermometer over the chimneypiece at 9 deg. Reaumur, with windows that wouldn’t shut, and a marble floor without carpet)–“that the balmy air of Italy” (my teeth chattered as I set it down) “would soon restore her; and indeed already she seemed to feel the change.” That she did, for she was crouching over a pan of charcoal ashes, with a railroad wrapper over her shoulders.

It’s no use going over what is in every one’s experience on first coming south of the Alps–the daily, hourly difficulty of not believing that you have taken a wrong road and got into Siberia; and strangest of all it is to see how little the natives think of it. I declare I often thought soap must be a great refrigerant, and I wish some chemist would inquire into the matter.

“Are we ever to begin this blessed language?” said Mrs O’D. to me, after four days of close arrest–snow still falling and the thermometer going daily down, down, lower and lower. Now I had made inquiries the day before from the landlord, and learned that he knew of a most competent person, not exactly a regular teacher who would insist upon our going to work in school fashion, but a man of sense and a gentleman–indeed, a person of rank and title, with whom the world had gone somewhat badly, and who was at that very moment suffering for his political opinions, far in advance, as they were, of those of his age.

“He’s a friend of Gioberti,” whispered the landlord in my ear, while his features became animated with the most intense significance. Now, I had never so much as heard of Gioberti, but I felt it would be a deep disgrace to confess it, and so I only exclaimed, with an air of half-incredulity, “Indeed!”

“As true as I’m here,” replied he. “He usually drops in about noon to read the ‘Opinione,’ and, if you permit, I’ll send him up to you. His name is Count Annibale Castrocaro.”