Chapter XXIX: Letter XXIX

Beloved: You know of the method for making a cat settle down in a strange place by buttering her all over: the theory being that by the time she has polished off the butter she feels herself at home? My morning's work has been the buttering of the Mother-Aunt with such things as will Lucerne her the most. When her instincts are appeased I am the more free to indulge my own.

So after breakfast we went round the cloisters, very thick set with tablets and family vaults, and crowded graves inclosed. It proved quite "the best butter." To me the penance turned out interesting after a period of natural repulsion. A most unpleasant addition to sepulchral sentiment is here the fashion: photographs of the departed set into the stone. You see an elegant and genteel marble cross: there on the pedestal above the name is the photo:--a smug man with bourgeois whiskers,--a militiaman with waxed mustaches well turned up,--a woman well attired and conscious of it: you cannot think how indecent looked the pretension of such types to the dignity of death and immortality.

But just one or two faces stood the test, and were justified: a young man oppressed with the burden of youth; a sweet, toothless grandmother in a bonnet, wearing old age like a flower; a woman not beautiful but for her neck which carried indignation; her face had a thwarted look. "Dead and rotten" one did not say of these in disgust and involuntarily as one did of the others. And yet I don't suppose the eye picks out the faces that kindled most kindness round them when living, or that one can see well at all where one sees without sympathy. I think the Mother-Aunt's face would not look dear to most people as it does to me,--yet my sight of her is the truer: only I would not put it up on a tombstone in order that it might look nothing to those that pass by.

I wrote this much, and then, leaving the M.-A. to glory in her innumerable correspondence, Arthur and I went off to the lake, where we have been for about seven hours. On it, I found it become infinitely more beautiful, for everything was mystified by a lovely bloomy haze, out of which the white peaks floated like dreams: and the mountains change and change, and seem not all the same as going when returning. Don't ask me to write landscape to you: one breathes it in, and it is there ever after, but remains unset to words.

The T----s whittle themselves out of our company just to the right amount: come back at the right time (which is more than Arthur and I are likely to do when our legs get on the spin), and are duly welcome with a diversity of doings to talk about. Their tastes are more the M.-A.'s, and their activities about halfway between hers and ours, so we make rather a fortunate quintette. The M---- trio join us the day after to-morrow, when the majority of us will head away at once to Florence. Arthur growls and threatens he means to be left behind for a week: and it suits the funny little jealousy of the M.-A. well enough to see us parted for a time, quite apart from the fact that I shall then be more dependent on her company. She will then glory in overworking herself,--say it is me; and I shall feel a fiend. No letter at all, dearest, this; merely talky-talky.--Yours without words.