“My father,” he said slowly, in tones replete with filial piety, “my father was a most delicately organized man, sensitive in body as in soul. How he did love his tiny, warm little study! In winter a temperature of twenty degrees Réaumur must always obtain there, by means of a small red-hot stove. When you entered it from the corridor on a day of cold and damp, or when the cutting tramontana blew, the warmth of it laid itself about you like a shawl, so that for very pleasure your eyes would fill with tears. The little room was stuffed with books and manuscripts, some of them of great value; he stood among them, at his narrow desk, in his blue flannel nightshirt, and devoted himself to the service of letters. He was small and delicately built, a good head shorter than I⁠—imagine!⁠—but with great tufts of grey hair on his temples, and a nose⁠—how long and pointed it was! And what a Romanist, my friends! One of the first of his time, with a rare mastery of our own tongue, and a Latin stylist such as no longer exists⁠—ah, a ‘ uomo letterato