But The Landlord Himself Followed Us From One Room To Another, Lighting Fires Here And There On The Hearth, Making Us Feel The Warm Air Rising From The Furnace, Calling Us To Witness By Palpation The Heat Of The Radiators, Soothing Our Fears, And Coaxing Our Unfaith.

His wife joined him in Italian and his son in English, and, if I do not say that these amiable people were worthy all the prosperity which was not then apparent in their establishment, may I never be comfortably lodged or fed again.

Our daily return for what we got was a poor twelve francs each; but fancy a haughty American landlord caressing us with such sweet and reassuring civility for any sum of money! Those gentle people made themselves our friends; there was nothing they would not do, or try to do, for us, in the vast, pink palace where we were never twenty guests together, and mostly eight or ten, with the run of a reading-room where there were the latest papers and periodicals from London and Paris, and with a kitchen whence we were served the best luncheons and dinners we ate in Europe.

The place had the true out-of-season charm. There were two stately dining-rooms besides the one where we dined, and there were pleasant spaces where we had afternoon tea or after-dinner coffee, and from which a magnificent stairway ascended to the upper halls, and a quiet lift waited our orders, with the landlord or his son to take us up; and so lonely and quiet and gentle, with porters and chambermaids speaking beautiful Tuscan, and watchful attendants everywhere prophesying and fulfilling our wants.

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