Italian letters of a diplomat's wife, January-May 1880, February-April, 1904 . walking I was glad to havemy sealskin coat. Nounou is rather tearful at being leftin sole charge of Francis, but as that young gentlemanis perfectly well, in roaring spirits, and will be giveneverything his heart desires by his Grandmother andAunts, I dont feel very unhappy about him. It seemsincredible that we should be going to meet soon. Howwe will prowl about Rome. I suppose I shall find itabsolutely changed—so many more people—not our dearold dead Rome. To H. L. K. t Florence, Via Romana, Villa McDonnell,Februa
Italian letters of a diplomat's wife, January-May 1880, February-April, 1904 . walking I was glad to havemy sealskin coat. Nounou is rather tearful at being leftin sole charge of Francis, but as that young gentlemanis perfectly well, in roaring spirits, and will be giveneverything his heart desires by his Grandmother andAunts, I dont feel very unhappy about him. It seemsincredible that we should be going to meet soon. Howwe will prowl about Rome. I suppose I shall find itabsolutely changed—so many more people—not our dearold dead Rome. To H. L. K. t Florence, Via Romana, Villa McDonnell,February 8, 1880. We arrived quite comfortably, dear mother, but almostfrozen, particularly W. He has not been extracted fromthe fire since we got here. Henrietta will have told you ofour start. Pontecoulant and one or two men were atthe station to see us off—also the Chef de Gare, mostcivil, and saying we should not be disturbed at the fron- * French idiom difficult to translate, meaning I ought to be very grate-ful to him. f Mrs. Charles King, mother of Madame Mrs. Charles King. i88o] OF A DIPLOMATS WIFE 13 tier—and that our coupe-lit would take us straightthrough to Florence. We had a perfectly easy journey,and I slept quite peacefully—waking up merely when wepassed through the tunnel, as the guard came in to shutall the windows. It was a beautiful, cold, starlightwinter night. The great mountains covered with snowlooked gigantic as we approached— sinistres as Mad-ame Hubert * said. She was much impressed and rathernervous. There were very few people in the train. Whenwe arrived at Modane the Chef de Gare was wait-ing for us—he had been telegraphed from Paris to ex-pect us. We had breakfast in the private room, and anice woman was waiting for us upstairs in the ladiesroom with hot water, towels, etc. I made quite a toilet—she carried off my dress and jacket to brush—and thenwe went down to a nice little breakfast which tasted verygood, as I hadnt had
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