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Chapters (26)
  1. Feature
  2. PREFACE
  3. VENICE
  4. THE GRAND CANAL
  5. VENICE: AN EARLY IMPRESSION
  6. TWO OLD HOUSES AND THREE YOUNG WOMEN
  7. CASA ALVISI
  8. FROM CHAMBÉRY TO MILAN
  9. THE OLD SAINT-GOTHARD LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK
  10. ITALY REVISITED
  11. A ROMAN HOLIDAY
  12. ROMAN RIDES
  13. ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
  14. THE AFTER-SEASON IN ROME
  15. FROM A ROMAN NOTE-BOOK
  16. A FEW OTHER ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
  17. A CHAIN OF CITIES
  18. SIENA EARLY AND LATE
  19. THE AUTUMN IN FLORENCE
  20. FLORENTINE NOTES
  21. TUSCAN CITIES
  22. OTHER TUSCAN CITIES
  23. RAVENNA
  24. THE SAINT'S AFTERNOON AND OTHERS
  25. You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
  26. Copyright

1873.

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ITALY REVISITED

I

I waited in Paris until after the elections for the new Chamber (they took place on the 14th of October); as only after one had learned that the famous attempt of Marshal MacMahon and his ministers to drive the French nation to the polls like a flock of huddling sheep, each with the white ticket of an official candidate round his neck, had not achieved the success which the energy of the process might have promised - only then it was possible to draw a long breath and deprive the republican party of such support as might have been conveyed in one's sympathetic presence. Seriously speaking too, the weather had been enchanting - there were Italian fancies to be gathered without leaving the banks of the Seine. Day after day the air was filled with golden light, and even those chalkish vistas of the Parisian beaux quartiers assumed the iridescent tints of autumn. Autumn weather in Europe is often such a very sorry affair that a fair-minded American will have it on his conscience to call attention to a rainless and radiant October.