E. M. Forster

Miss Bart­lett, though skilled in the del­ic­acies of con­ver­sa­tion, was power­less in the pres­ence of bru­tal­ity. It was im­possible to snub any­one so gross. Her face reddened with dis­pleas­ure.

Over such tri­vi­al­it­ies as these many a valu­able hour may slip away, and the trav­el­ler who has gone to Italy to study the tact­ile val­ues of Gi­otto, or the cor­rup­tion of the Pa­pacy, may re­turn re­mem­ber­ing noth­ing but the blue sky and the men and wo­men who live un­der it.

and she stopped, and she cried:

“A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has its own smell.”

“Miss Lav­ish is so ori­ginal,” mur­mured Lucy. This was a stock re­mark,

I wish Miss Lav­ish would tell me her­self. We star­ted such friends. But I don’t think she ought to have run away with Baedeker that morn­ing in Santa Croce. Char­lotte was most an­noyed at find­ing me prac­tic­ally alone, and so I couldn’t help be­ing a little an­noyed with Miss Lav­ish.”

Miss Bart­lett had not heard of Alessio Bal­dov­inetti, but she knew that Mr. Eager was no com­mon­place chap­lain. He was a mem­ber of the res­id­en­tial colony who had made Florence their home. He knew the people who never walked about with Baedekers, who had learnt to take a si­esta after lunch, who took drives the pen­sion tour­ists had never heard of, and saw by private in­flu­ence gal­ler­ies which were closed to them. Liv­ing in del­ic­ate se­clu­sion, some in fur­nished flats, oth­ers in Renais­sance vil­las on Fiesole’s slope, they read, wrote, stud­ied, and ex­changed ideas, thus at­tain­ing to that in­tim­ate know­ledge, or rather per­cep­tion, of Florence which is denied to all who carry in their pock­ets the coupons of Cook.

So it happened that from pat­ron­iz­ing ci­vil­ity he had slowly passed if not to pas­sion, at least to a pro­found un­eas­i­ness. Already at Rome he had hin­ted to her that they might be suit­able for each other.

The Piazza Si­gnoria is too stony to be bril­liant.

could not have be­lieved that stones, a Log­gia, a foun­tain, a palace tower, would have such sig­ni­fic­ance. For a mo­ment she un­der­stood the nature of ghosts.

The fault is mine: I left her un­chap­eroned.”