There is indeed a very fairly comfortable house, kept under the management of two sisters of the order of Saint Francis, expressly for the purpose of lodging lady pilgrims to the shrine.

For in former days--scarcely now, I think--the wives of the Florentine aristocracy used to undertake a pilgrimage to La Vernia as a work of devotion.

But this house is at the bottom of the long ascent--nearly an hour's severe climb from the convent--an arrangement which necessarily involves much additional fatigue to a lady visitor.
George Eliot writes to Miss Sara Hennell on the 19th of June, a letter inserted by Mr.Cross in his admirable biography of his wife--"I wish you could have shared the pleasures of our last expedition from Florence to the monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia.

I think it was just the sort of thing you would have entered into with thorough zest." And she goes on to speak of La Vernia in a manner which seems to show that it was the latter establishment which most keenly interested and impressed her.

She was in fact under the spell of the great and still potent personality of Saint Francis, which informs with his memory every detail of the buildings and rocks around you.
Each legend was full of interest for her.