I looked into the Duomo, too, and was pretty well content to leave
it. Then I came homeward, and lost my way, and wandered far off through
the white sunshine, and the scanty shade of the vineyard walls, and the
olive-trees that here and there branched over them. At last I saw our
own gray battlements at a distance, on one side, quite out of the
direction in which I was travelling, so was compelled to the grievous
mortification of retracing a great many of my weary footsteps. It was a
very hot day. This evening I have been on the towertop star-gazing, and
looking at the comet, which waves along the sky like an immense feather
of flame. Over Florence there was an illuminated atmosphere, caused by
the lights of the city gleaming upward into the mists which sleep and
dream above that portion of the valley, as well as the rest of it. I saw
dimly, or fancied I saw, the hill of Fiesole on the other side of
Florence, and remembered how ghostly lights were seen passing thence to
the Duomo on the night when Lorenzo the Magnificent died.
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