From that, in some way or other, we went to French, of which I knew next to nothing; but, when I asked her and she spoke some of it, it pleased me to listen to it as it came from her lips,—some poetry she had learnt, and lastly a little song. I was sorry when the song was over, and went on by her without a word, for a little, as if the music would continue of itself. Then I remembered, and said that I liked to hear her sing. This led us somehow to Italian, and she repeated some Italian too for me.
'It must give you pleasure,' I said, looking at her 'to know these beautiful languages.'
'Well,' she answered, 'it does please me sometimes; but I've known them ever since I was quite small, and so they seem somehow natural to me.'
'I have never been out of England,' I said, 'I should like to see Italy. I think I should like to die in Italy, where the sun shines always, and there is no cold wind and rain, and the fields are full of flowers.'
'But the wind does blow,' she said, 'horribly sometimes. The sirocco in the autumn is terrible, and so are the spring winds in Florence—so piercing and cold. All the people wrap themselves up in great cloaks.'
'Ah but,' I said, looking at her, 'that's not the time I was thinking of.'
Then she began to tell me about Italy and their life there. I asked particularly about the pictures and statues, telling her that the only pictures I had ever seen were in the Painted Chamber at Greenwich, and described the one of Nelson rushing wounded on deck, and the other of him being taken up, a pale dead body, into heaven.
At that point we stopped (for walking on the bank of stones and shingle on which we were was toilsome) and she looked aside and up under the cliff, and I also. It was a sort of plateau a few yards higher than the bank, covered with thick grass, and having small trees here and there. She was looking at one part of it. There were two small streams, the one larger a little than the other, which made two small cascades flowing down from a higher elevation through the grass, gathered tufts of which and weeds guided the flow into the
