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the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the young
boatman who chanted Tasso. The Interviewer was perhaps
disappointed, but Henrietta was at least seeing Europe.
Her present purpose was to get down to Rome before the
malaria should come on—he apparently supposed that it
began on a fixed day; and with this design she was to spend
at present but few days in Florence. Mr. Bantling was to go
with her to Rome, and she pointed out to Isabel that as he
had been there before, as he was a military man and as he
had had a classical education—he had been bred at Eton,
where they study nothing but Latin and Whyte-Melville,
said Miss Stackpole—he would be a most useful compan-
ion in the city of the Caesars. At this juncture Ralph had
the happy idea of proposing to Isabel that she also, under
his own escort, should make a pilgrimage to Rome. She ex-
pected to pass a portion of the next winter there—that was
very well; but meantime there was no harm in surveying
the field. There were ten days left of the beautiful month of
May—the most precious month of all to the true Rome lov-
er. Isabel would become a Rome-lover; that was a foregone
conclusion. She was provided with a trusty companion of
her own sex, whose society, thanks to the fact of other calls
on this lady’s attention, would probably not be oppressive.
Madame Merle would remain with Mrs. Touchett; she had
left Rome for the summer and wouldn’t care to return. She
professed herself delighted to be left at peace in Florence;
she had locked up her apartment and sent her cook home to
Palestrina. She urged Isabel, however, to assent to Ralph’s
proposal, and assured her that a good introduction to Rome

400 The Portrait of a Lady