But O - - Was
Obdurate; Buoyed Up, I Imagine, With The Prospect Of Movement And Of
Causing Some Little Trouble At Home.
As the weather had grown unusually
hot, I booked at his own suggestion a luxurious cabin on a home-bound
liner and engaged a valet for the journey.
On my handing him the
tickets, he said he had just changed his mind; he would travel overland;
there were some copper mines in Etruria of which he was director; he
meant to have a look at them en route and "give those people Hell" for
something or other. I tried to dissuade him, and all in vain. Finally I
said:
"You'll die, if you travel by land in this heat."
So he did. They carried him out of the train in the early days of June,
here at Pisa, feet first....
I never learnt the fate of that library of erotic literature. But his
will contained one singular provision: the body was to be cremated and
its ashes scattered among the hills of his Alpine property. This was his
idea of "being even" with the superstitious peasantry, who would
thenceforward never have ventured out of doors after dark, for fear of
encountering his ghost. He would harass them eternally! It was no bad
notion of revenge. A sandy-haired gentleman came from Austria to Italy
to convey this handful of potential horrors to the mountains, but the
customs officials at Ala refused to allow it to enter the country and it
ultimately came to rest in England.
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