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VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
Sept. 30, 1892
DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a
deep leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most
conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
hillock five and six hundred years ago.
The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a
little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but
it won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the
Italian tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman
understand only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn,
but Jean and the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is
the worst off of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all
among the help.
With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
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