Before
I knew what I had done, I had brought the iron down, with all my
force, upon its skull, and it had fallen dead at my feet.
_Finis coronat opus._
November 22d.
Verona:--I have abandoned the"History of Renaissance Morals."
The dog's-eared MS. and the dusty pile of notes I have shot into
a lumber heap in a corner of this room, where I sit and shiver by
a little stove. It is immense, marble, cold, comfortless,
suggestive of "the vasty halls of death." I have been here a
week to-day. I thought I should find rest. I should breathe the
atmosphere of Italy again. I should ease my heart among the
masterworks of Girolamo dai Libri and Cavazzola, and, in the
presence of the blue castellated mountains they loved to paint,
my spirit would even be as theirs. In this old-world city, I
fondly imagined, I should forget the Regent's Park, and attune my
mind to the life that once filled its narrow streets.
But nothing have I found save solitude. I stood to-day before
the mutilated fresco of Morone, my rapture of six years ago,
and hated it with unreasoning hatred.
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