As I have said, Raymond wrote. He wrote, for example, with a voluminous duteousness, to his parents. His letters to them, so far as they came to my notice, were curious; probably he meant that they should be saved and should become a sort of journal of his travels. They were almost completely impersonal. There was plenty of straight description; but beyond some slight indications of his own movements, past or intended, there was no narration. He never mentioned people he met; he never described his adventures—if he had any. He seemed to be saying to Europe, as Rastignac said to Paris, "À nous deux, maintenant!" He was at grips with the Old World, and that sufficed.

His letters to me, however, were not devoid of personal reactions. These commonly took an Æsthetic turn. An early letter from Rome had a good deal to say about the Baroque. He met it everywhere; it was an abomination; it tried his soul. Fontana and Maderna, the Gog and Magog of architecture, had flanked the portals of art and had let through a hideous throng of artificialities and corruptions.... The word "Baroque" was new to me, and I looked it up. I learned that it described, not a current movement, as I had supposed, but an influence which had exhausted itself nearly three hundred years ago. But it was still recent and real to Raymond. And I learned, further, that this style had modern champions who could say a good word for it. In any event, it might be accepted calmly as a valuable and characteristic link in the general historic chain.

In another letter he was ecstatic over the Gothic brickwork of Cremona. It was so beautiful, he said in as many words, that it made his heart ache; not often did Raymond let himself go like that. Eager to follow his track—and to understand, if possible, his heart, however peculiar and baffling—I looked up, in turn, North Italian brickwork. This was twice three hundred years old. But it had stirred other modern hearts than Raymond's; for an English Æsthete had tried (and almost succeeded) to impose it on his country as a living mode. "Very well," I said; "Italian brickwork may reasonably be accepted as a modern interest."

Raymond, before descending to Italy, had spent some months in Paris. Circumstances had enabled him to frequent a few studios, and his first letter to me from that city had been rather technical and "viewy." Incidentally, he had seen something of the students, and had found little to approve, either in their manners or their morals. He left Paris without reporting any moral infractions of his own and settled down for some stay in Florence. He was studying the language further, he reported: a language, he said, which was easy to begin, but hard to continue—the longer you studied the less you really knew. However, he knew enough for daily practical purposes. His pension was pleasant; small, and the few visitors were mostly English.

But there were one or two Americans in the house, and they came home a few months later with their account of Raymond and his ways. It was needed; for the three or four letters that he had printed in one of our newspapers contained little beyond descriptions of set sights—to think we should have continued to welcome that sort of thing so long! Well, these people reported him as conscientiously busy, for his hour each day, with grammar and dictionary. He was also getting his hand in painting; and he had "taken on" musical composition, even to instrumentation. "Too many irons!" commented my lively young informant. "And I think I should get my painting in Paris and my music in Germany." She also said that Raymond had next to no social life—he showed hardly the slightest desire to make acquaintances.

"An old Frenchman came to the place for a few days," she continued; "and as he was leaving he said your friend was living in an ivory tower—the windows few, the door narrow, and the key thrown away. 'Ivory tower'—do you understand what that means?"

"No," I said. But of course I understand now.