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& the little bright clouds shaped like pea pods The grass is green but dry & the Florentines are there reading lying around in little groups singing and playing their guitars or mandolines 

What a strange man passes down the path amongst them. [[strikethrough]] so [[/strikethrough]] It is unusual to see any one so earnest. Everything has become quiet as the landscape You feel it right away. The music stopped. There is a little child 3 hes run & hid his face in his mother's lap. The older one is old enough to have more confidence so he looks at him queer with [[strikethrough]] his little finger in his mouth - a very childis [[/strikethrough]] the back of his finger in his mouth a very childish action. It's a beautiful child.

Theres another child 5 coming along with his nurse [[strikethrough]] with [[/strikethrough]] the same way as Dante. He has suddenly caught sight of him & pulls back so as to almost upset his nurse.

He must look very queer to the little children, they have not seen many such men as Dante or they would not be afraid.

Way off in the distance comes a pair of lovers down the path their arms entwined. They walk as slow as Dante & by the time they come along the children will be at play again & some will laugh again I would not be the first one & the music will be going, the love songs a singing & [[strikethrough]] th [[/strikethrough]] some of them will forget the queer man that came along.  He cant forget them for he neither saw them nor heard them.  

I wanted to buy a photograph of it but I couldnt get it. Gouvil is a picture dealer. He is getting out an engraving of it which will be done in two or 3 years & it would interfere perhaps with the sale of one of them if a photograph was let out. He had them. I have a great mind to ask Gerome for one some day.

Gerome always makes me think of Couture they are so different. We went to see Helmick the other night who has been living all summer in the little town of Ecouen. They told us funny things about him & his laziness. He wore a big straw hat to keep of the sun & had an old coat or none on & his shirt always open all the way & he would go along the road till he came to some nice shady place & then sleep. The ladies were scandalized till they became so well acquainted with his belly button that it no longer shocked them, for they'd meet him every day. A cold or rainy day he would go about from one studio to another of the artists and blow blow & talk about his book he was writing