The murder is represented as having been committed on a sleeping person by piercing the heart with a needle, and then artistically covering the almost imperceptible orifice of the wound with wax, in such sort as to render the discovery of the wound and the cause of death almost impossible even by professional eyes.  And I may mention that the facts were related to me by a distinguished man of science at Florence, as having really occurred.

Perhaps, since I have been led to speak of this story of mine, I may be excused for recording an incident connected with it, which occurred some years subsequently at Rome, in the drawing-room of Mrs. Marsh.  The scene of the story is Ravenna.  And Mrs. Marsh specially introduced me to a very charming young couple, the Count and Countess Pasolini of Ravenna, as the author of A Siren.  They said they had been most anxious to know who could have written that book!  They thought that no Englishman could have been resident at Ravenna without their having known him, or at least known of him.  And yet it was evident that a writer, who could photograph the life and society of Ravenna as it had been photographed in the book in question must have resided there and lived in the midst of it for some time.  But I never was in Ravenna for a longer time than a week in my life.

It was many years after the visit of George Eliot and Mr. Lewes to my house at Ricorboli that I and my wife visited them at The Heights, Witley, in Surrey.  I found that George Eliot had grown!  She was evidently happier.  There was the same specially quiet and one may say harmonious gentleness about her manner and her thought and her ways.  But her outlook on life seemed to be a brighter, a larger, and as I cannot doubt, a healthier one.  She would no longer, I am well assured, have talked of regretting that she had been born!  It would be to give an erroneous impression if I were to say that she seemed to be more in charity with all men, for assuredly I never knew her otherwise.  But, if the words may be used, as I think they may be understood, without irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator.  The ways of God to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the futurity of the world was a more hopeful one.  Of course optimism had with her to be long-sighted!  But she seemed to have become reconciled to the certainty that he who stands on a lofty eminence must needs see long stretches of dusty road across the plains beneath him.

Nothing could be more enjoyable than the evenings passed by the partie carree consisting of herself and Lewes, and my wife and myself.  I am afflicted by hardness of hearing, which shuts me out from many of the pleasures of society.  And George Eliot had that excellency in woman, a low voice.  Yet, partly no doubt by dint of an exertion which her kindness prompted, but in great measure from the perfection