Prato is a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down parts of Florence, only more so.  The streets were a seething caldron of cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle’s-eye ways bristling with agitated horns.

The cathedral is little and good:  damaged, of course, wherever the last three centuries have laid hands on it.  At the corner of the west front is an out-door pulpit beautifully put on with a mushroom hood over its head.  The main lines of the interior are finely severe, either quite round or quite flat, and proportions good always.  An upholstered priest coming out to say mass is generally a sickening sight, so wicked and ugly in look and costume.  The best-behaved people are the low-down beggars, who are most decoratively devotional.

We tried to model our exit on a brigand-beggar who came in to ask permission to murder one of his enemies.  He got his request granted at one of the side-altars (some strictly local Madonna, I imagine), and his gratitude as he departed was quite touching.  Having studiously copied his exit, we want to know whom we shall murder to pay ourselves for our trouble.

It amuses me to have my share of driving over these free and easy and very narrow highroads.  But A. has to do the collision-shouting and the cries of “Via!”—­the horse only smiles when he hears me do it.

Also did I tell you that on Saturday we two walked from here over to Fiesole—­six miles there, and ten back:  for why?—­because we chose to go what Arthur calls “a bee-line across country,” having thought we had sighted a route from the top of Fiesole.  But in the valley we lost it, and after breaking our necks over precipices and our hearts down cul-de-sacs that led nowhere, and losing all the ways that were pointed out to us, for lack of a knowledge of the language, we came out again into view of Florence about half a mile nearer than when we started and proportionately far away from home.  When he had got me thoroughly foot-sore, Arthur remarked complacently, “The right way to see a country is to lose yourself in it!” I didn’t feel the truth of it then:  but applied to other things I perceive its wisdom.  Dear heart, where I have lost myself, what in all the world do I know so well as you?

    Your most lost and loving.

LETTER XXXV.

Beloved:  Rain swooped down on us from on high during the night, and the country is cut into islands:  the river from a rocky wriggling stream has risen into a tawny, opaque torrent that roars with a voice a mile long and is become quite unfordable.  The little mill-stream just below has broken its banks and poured itself away over the lower vineyards into the river; a lot of the vines look sadly upset, generally unhinged and unstrung, yet I am told the damage is really small.  I hope so, for I enjoyed a real lash-out of weather, after the changelessness of the long heat.