Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/131

Rh sun sinks behind the hills of the frontier, there is such a purple, red, and gold tint on the sea and sky that many would pronounce it overdone or unnatural in a painting. A most exquisite pink shade is cast over the hills and town. There is one nice opera-house at Nice, one pretty church, a corso and terrace, where you go to hear the band and eat ices in the evening; there is the reading club at Visconti's for ladies as well as men, where you can read and write and meet others and enjoy yourself. (I am talking of 1857.) Our apartments suit us very well. My portion consists of a nice lofty bedroom, a painted ceiling, furnished in English style, a little bathroom paved with red china, and a little sort of ante-drawing-room. My windows look over a little garden, where the African tree is, and the sea beyond, and beyond that again Africa and Richard.

We left Nice for Genoa at 5.30 on November 14, my sister, her husband, and self, in the coupé, which was very much like being packed as sardines—no room for legs. However, we were very jolly, only we got rather stiff during the twenty-four hours' journey; for we only stopped twice—once for ten minutes at Oniglia at 4 a.m. for a cup of coffee, and once at noon next day for half an hour at another place to dine. However, I was too happy to grumble, having just received a letter saying that Richard would be home in next June, 1858 (he was not home for a year later); we smoked and chatted and slept alternately. The Cornice road is beautiful—a wild, lonely road in the mountains, with precipices, ravines, torrents, and