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[47] miserable farce of a quarantine, and next day after to-morrow are to be released, and pronounced free of infection. On the whole, it has not been worse than we anticipated, and we have all been so truly busy that I do not know when the same number of days have passed so quickly. Every morning I have risen at seven, and we have all met for breakfast about nine; after which we have occupied ourselves in reading and writing . . . . till twelve, when we have generally walked an hour in the most delightful weather. . . . . At five we have met again for dinner, after which we took a dish of tea together and finished the evening with a game of whist. . . . . Part of the time there have been fifty persons in the same condition with ourselves, and at this moment there are above twenty Americans here. Most of the parties complain much of the tediousness and vexation of the delay, and we have heartily pitied a poor Russian Countess who has heard here of the illness and death of a child at Florence, hardly twenty hours drive from here, which she yet could not be permitted to visit. . . . .

November 1.—This morning we were released. The population of the lazaretto has been much increased within the last two days, . . . . in such numbers that no suitable accommodations can be provided for them . . . . . This morning they crowded round the carriage as we entered it, looking like the poor souls in Virgil who are not permitted to pass over the Styx . . . . . However, we did not stop to think much of such things, but hastened on to Bologna, where we were glad indeed to find ourselves again amidst the somewhat cheerless comforts of a huge Italian palazzo, turned into an inn. As soon as we were established we went out to see the city, with an appetite for sights somewhat sharpened by an abstinence of a full fortnight. . . . .

The evening I spent with Mad. Martinetti, with whom, nineteen years ago, I spent the only two evenings I ever passed in Bologna.1 She is not as beautiful as she was then, when she had recently sat to Gerard as the model for his Corinna improvisating on Cape Misenum; but she is still a fine-looking woman, and has the grace, sweetness, and intelligence of which time can never despoil her, and which have always made her house one of the most agreeable in Italy.


1 See Vol. I. pp. 166,167.

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