XIV.
With his mother’s permission, Baron Mundy went for a few weeks before harvest-time to the north of Italy. This was only the second journey of any great length that he had ever taken, because Baroness Salomena did not favour travelling particularly, considering it, as she said, an expensive and superfluous matter of fashion. As for everything else, so here too she had a good reason ready at hand.
“People are the same everywhere,” she used to say; “the only difference is, that some of them speak Chinese, and others Turkish, or some other strange tongue. And as to scenery and landscapes, good stereoscopic pictures make up for them quite well.”
She certainly acknowledged that change of air and climate sometimes had a beneficial effect on people’s health; but this was the only advantage to be gained by travelling, in her opinion, and was the sole motive that prevailed with her in allowing her son to travel abroad on this occasion. She had remarked for several months that he was not quite as well as he always used to be, and that sometimes a deep melancholy seemed to oppress him, the cause of which she never imagined could lie in
