ideal spot in which to idle, to dream, even to think, but no work is possible here and that, perhaps, is why I love Florence so much. I feel that I could remain here always and, if I did I should do nothing, nothing, that is, but drink my coffee and eat my rolls and honey in the morning, gaze across to the hills and dream, stroll over the wondrous Ponte Santa Trinità, which connects us so gracefully with the Via Tornabuoni, wonder how Ghirlandaio achieved the naïve charm of the frescoes in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, nothing else but these things. And, of course, I should always avoid the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.
But he had scarcely uttered the name before he determined that he must drink some beer and so we strolled across the Piazza, on which he had just placed a malison, into the Giubbe Rosse, full of Americans writing letters, and Swedes and Germans, reading their native papers. We sat down at a table just outside the door and asked one of the red-coats, whose scarlet jackets give this place its cant name, to bring us two steins of Münchener. Then came an anachronism, one of those anachronisms so unusual in Florence which, more than any other city, is all of a piece. A stage-coach, such a coach as one sees in old England, drawn by four horses, drove gaily through the square. The interior seemed empty but on the top sat several English girls in sprigged muslins, a few pale youths, and a
