After this the days at Florence passed swiftly. Aunt Caroline was absorbed in the galleries, and Uncle Jim or Mrs. Sanford spent much time there with her. The young people did their sightseeing by themselves, Richard, Ellen, Irma, and Marion, at least. Katie seemed, as Richard put it, "disaffected." She said she had been in Europe too long to care to spend much time over galleries and historical places.
"Shopping is much more necessary now, as I am to sail so soon, and grandmamma is willing to pay duty on any amount of things."
So, while Katie bought embroidered dresses, and spent hours over fittings, the others made what Ellen called "pilgrimages." Once it was to the old palace that had been Michelangelo's home, lately presented to Florence by a descendant of his brother. There they saw furniture and smaller belongings of the great man, manuscripts and sketches and plans of some of his great works, and on the walls of one room a series of paintings representing dramatic incidents in his life.
"And yet he died almost a century before Plymouth was settled," said Irma, returning to the historical comparisons of the first part of her trip.
Again, one day, rambling through a narrow street, they came to the so-called "house of Dante," a tiny dwelling with small rooms and steep stairs, and though Marion tried to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the girls by telling them that no one now really believed this to be the house where Dante had lived, they only laughed at him.
"No one can prove that it is _not_ the house where he was born; and every one knows that it belonged to his father. But at any rate it's a charming little museum, and since I have seen all the interesting manuscripts and books there, I am more anxious than ever to read Dante," and Ellen patted her brother's arm, adding, "No, Richard, what we wish to believe we will believe, especially when it's true."
"Just like a girl," responded Richard, smiling.
One other day they made a pilgrimage to the Protestant cemetery, chiefly to please Ellen, who wished to see the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They found it without trouble, a plain marble sarcophagus on Corinthian columns, with no inscription except the initials of the poet and the date of her death. Near the sarcophagus a few pink roses were in bloom.