She had become his real self, his genuine _ego_ to all intents and purposes.

And his talk and thoughts were egoistic accordingly.

Of his own person, his ailments, his works, his ideas, his impressions, you might hear not a word from him in the intercourse of many days.
But there was in his inmost heart a _naif_ and never-doubting faith that talk on all these subjects as regarded _her_ must be profoundly interesting to those he talked with.

To me, at all events, it was so.
Perhaps had it been otherwise, there would have been less of it.
We were to reach Camaldoli the first night, and had therefore to leave Florence very early in the morning.

At Pelago, a little _paese_--village we should call it--on the Arno some fourteen or fifteen miles above Florence, we were to find saddle-horses, the journey we were about to make being in those days practicable in no other way, unless on foot.