He bore the heat of the Italian summer like a salamander, and used to start off at high noon for long walks over the hills.

He often went down into Florence, rambled through her close, dim streets, and lounged away mornings in the churches and galleries.

On many of these occasions Rowland bore him company, for they were the times when he was most like his former self.

Before Michael Angelo's statues and the pictures of the early Tuscans, he quite forgot his own infelicities, and picked up the thread of his old aesthetic loquacity.

He had a particular fondness for Andrea del Sarto, and affirmed that if he had been a painter he would have taken the author of the Madonna del Sacco for his model.