My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-three

Wednesday, 28 December, 1988
Firenze [Florence]

Tired, so I slept till nearly 10:00. Got up, hit a pastry shop/snack bar for some breakfast (Italian pastries aren’t as good as French ones) then a bank for some Italian currency for some traveller’s cheques.

Then, since my main personal reason for coming to Firenze (apart from the external feeling that I "ought" to see it) was to do a bit of shopping, I hit the open market.

After about three hours of wandering up and down the Via dell’Ariento I came away with a brown leather belt for 15,000 lire (the man put a different buckle on for me), some four-button-length silk-lined black leather gloves for around 22,000 lire (to replace the pair I lost the left hand to in Lyon), a dark wine red leather dress purse for 35,000 lire, and a large (120 cm square) wool navy, gray, and red scarf for 27,000 lire.†

The young man who sold me that might be going to Philadelphia in the next year-- to study at Wharton. Ye gods. That’s where Mort Levi* [one of our best architecture clients back in the States] went. He’s not sure he wants to leave his friends and family, though, since he feels that if he goes to America he goes for good.

This city is funny for the language. I’ll be struggling along in Italian and the Florentine will inform me he or she speaks English-- and so they do, often better than I.

Bought some dates and some black olives in the adjacent covered market. Interesting thing about that place. I’ve seen nudie posters in machine shops and car repair garages, but I’d never thought to see a picture of an all but naked woman hung up as an inducement to buy vegetables. Maybe I’m silly but I gave such stands no consideration.

My shopping accomplished, I went over to the Duomo and went inside. Very much a tourist church, though some people were managing to pray in a side chapel or two.

Paid the fee to go up Brunelleschi’s dome. The inside of it was covered with the omnipresent scaffolding so I have no idea how it’s supposed to look from the floor of the cathedral. But you can go up to a gallery around the springing point and then on up over the dome itself (someone had chalked on the upper surface of the inner dome, in English, "BRUNELLESCHI IS GOD") then up and outside onto a deck around the cupola.

Damned shame it was so blasted foggy today. The view must be magnificent when it’s clear.

I’d gone through most of my Italian currency at the markets and I still had to pay the hotel for tonight. So I went back, paid the lady, dropped off my purchases, and got more traveller’s cheques out of the money belt. Changed those at a different bank than before. Better exchange rate at the second. Oh well! Bought a very good hot proscuitto ham and mushroom sandwich at a snack bar and ate it on the way there.

Went by Santa Maria Novello to look at the façade but didn’t go in. Headed down to the Arno to look at the river from the Ponte S. Trinita. Ponte Vecchio to the east there, all lined with shops. Went and half-crossed it as well. This place is unbelievable like Toulouse and Paris. Jewelry and fashion and other high priced shops all crammed in one after another. Who buys all this stuff?

The Piazza Signoria next. And the woman at the lecture last night was right (not the Canadian I spoke to, but another Toronto native who either works for or lives with or is married to-- or all three!-- Mr. von Durer)-- the place is dripping with scaffolding. You can just see Cellini’s Perseus standing above it in the southern arcade. Nevertheless, this was the artistic reason I’d come to Firenze. Berlioz stood here, about where I was standing, and saw that statue. He was inspired by it and by the memoirs of its sculptor to compose his opera Benevenuto Cellini. He saw all this, that I was seeing (sans scaffolding), and he gazed on these very buildings and sculptures-- oh God!

OK, then, time to go home!

No, at least one museum had to be done and I chose the Uffizi. Saw everything there (that wasn’t being cleaned). I love the way they can afford to let all these Roman copies of Greek sculptures just sit out unlabelled in a dimly-lit corridor. Hell, they’ve got more where those came from.

When I was still in the early period galleries a girl came up and asked me if I spoke English. I said yes and she said, "Are you Blogwen*-- I forget your last name." I looked and it was Melissa* from the program in Oxford. Well.

We stood and talked for awhile. She’s travelling with Lucy*, another of the OOSC people, and is heading for Greece tonight. She, too, was in Paris the 18th and saw Darrell* and Harriet* [two more of our Oxford American contingent and fellow-lodgers at Coverdale College*] at the Louvre. They were looking for the Impressionist paintings . . . †† And if I think I’ve been having problems with French, they were really in difficulties. Melissa told me they knew none at all.

It was nice to see a familiar face like that. Very encouraging.

She'd been at the Uffizi for awhile already and was getting ready to leave. Me, I still had a lot to see. And so, dutifully, I did. I know it’s blasphemy to say it but, on this trip at least, I find myself unmoved by great paintings per se. Oh, it was nice seeing all the famous art history slide subjects in person, such as the Giottos from last night and the Botticellis and then the Raphaels and the Titians. But after awhile my eyes just glaze over. I got a pounding headache from staring at things and playing the intellectual. I ought to be more heart-stirred by these but . . . I don’t know. I did enjoy them, yes, but after awhile it’s like ticking off a checklist.

There was a Visitation scene that impressed me, by Mario-- damn, now I can’t recall his name; begins with an "A," I think‡-- anyway, I liked it for the originality of the facial expressions of the two women, neither hyper-humanistic nor "unco gude." Mary looks as if she’s wordlessly saying, "Oh, cousin, it’s all too wonderful for me, I don’t know how I can express it or even bear up under it!" And Elizabeth’s expression replies, "That’s all right, little one, you don’t have to try to tell me, I know!" This Mary looks as if she has an appreciation of the long centuries of Jewish prophecy leading up to this moment that now find their fulfillment through her. She has a happy lack of that sense of being herself the pivot of history so obnoxiously present in so many pictures of the Virgin Mary. I’ll admit the effect was more 19th Century Romantic than 16th Century classical Renaissance, but that’s the Renaissance’s problem.

I still can't get over how badly-lit the art is in that place. What with that, sensory overload, and maybe my feat of Alpinism earlier at the Duomo, by the time I left the Uffizi I had a raging headache. I’d thought I’d find a restaurant and sit down for a meal, but no way. I bought some cheese at a shop and ate it for supper with the olives and dates and more of a chocolate bar I bought in Dijon.
______________________
†As far as I can figure it, the exchange rate was around 1,230 lire to the dollar.
‡Mariotto Albertinelli.
††Oh, dear. Those had all been moved to the Quai d'Orsay.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Fourteen

Monday, 19 December 1988
Paris to Amiens and back to Paris

Did not get up for the 8:48 train to Beauvais. Sure, I wanted to see la Cathédrale de St.-Pierre de Beauvais, but not while I was feeling like hell and not caring all that much.

I’ve figured out by now I’m suffering from intestinal troubles, not That Time of Month. No other sign of flu, so I guess the laws of sanitation or physics or whatever you want to call it do operate in France after all, and that unrefrigerated coquille au saumon the night before last got me. If it’s food poisoning there’s nothing I can do but wait for it to blow over, so I went back to sleep.

When I did get up, I went through my things to make sure I had everything ready to go to Amiens. I was also searching to see if I could find my NatWest checkbook-- last night I discovered it was missing. I made another search of everything this morning and still couldn’t find it. I know I took it out of my purse at Toulouse to lighten the load there; I must’ve left it at the hotel.

So what morning I had was spent trying to get ahold of the National Westminster number in Oxford (a very trying experience) and then calling them to cancel my remaining cheques. They said ok and they’ll have a new book waiting for me in Oxford.

Kept having to feed the payphone francs. Ate them like candy.

Caught the 1:12 train to Amiens from la gare du Nord. Looking out the window at the landscape made my stomach feel better. It reminded me of Kansas. Isn’t that stupid? Anyway, the sun was peeking out now and again and the wind was blowing the clouds along like 70.

I’m finding it’s generally easy to find where the cathedral is in a town like Amiens. One heads out the front door of the station and heads in the direction of the largest visible steeple. Standard Operating Procedure here.

I liked the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame d’Amiens. I liked its height and its variety and its black and white marble floor, which you could see because the chairs were all pulled back. I even liked the fact that it’d lost a lot of its stained glass-- the clear kind lets the light in.

And maybe I liked Amiens because the skies made a strong effort towards clearing up there. It had been actively raining on my way from the station and now I went out the northwest portal and stood there, watching the sky which was full of blowing clouds, to see what it would do. There was a thin greenish strip of blue sky over to the north which looked like it might get bigger. Meanwhile I could enjoy the sight of gargoyle waterspouts actually in operation.

Went back inside and wandered around the nave some more. Some workmen were repairing the metalwork on the north transept chapel and I noticed they had some music going. I hoped it wasn’t secular. But then I listened better and realized it was a tape of Mass being sung, and then I discovered it was emanating from speakers in the nave itself.

More restoration work was going on in the apsidal chapels. One of these had wall paintings that were covered up by scaffolding and drop cloths to the shoulders of the saints depicted. But the light was very bright on the heads, which I could see. Which was good.

Stepped outside to check on the skies again; much better. The sky had turned blue and the white clouds were racing by towards the east, so that if you looked up at the west front it looked as if the entire facade were tipping down on you. Vertiginous and exhilarating, all at once.

No direct sunlight on the sculptures yet but one can admire anyway. That Beau Dieu is so wonderful. I wish I could get up and look at it straight in the face, though. Though I suppose looking up to Jesus is most appropriate.

No card stand in the church so I went up the street to a librairie and bought some cathedral postcards and got some change for the guidebook the church did have (honor system). Went back and got that just before the cathedral closed for the afternoon.

The southern portal is the one with the Vierge Dorée, which is up again after recently being restored. (Some of the postcards for sale show the doorway without it.) I didn’t spend much time contemplating that ensemble, though, because there was a drunk hanging around there being rather obnoxious.

(Interesting, how I thought of him as simply ‘a drunk,’ and not as a ‘drunken Frenchman.’)

Train back to Paris at 5:57. In the meantime I wandered around Amiens a bit and stopped for supper provisions at the usual patisseries. Bought a cheese crepe affair that apparently is a specialty of Picardie.

Back in Paris, coming from the Luxembourg Métro stop, I noticed that Penguin has an English language bookshop along there. Pity I didn’t notice it sooner. I’m dying for something besides Geoffroy de Villehardouin to read.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Thirteen

Sunday, 18 December, 1988
Paris

Woke up around 7:00 AM with a stomachache. It was either food poisoning, indigestion, the flu that’s going around, or the approach of the wrong time of month. I chose to believe the last, having pills on hand to throw at that condition. So I took them then went back to sleep.

Nevertheless I did not feel too wonderful all day. Considered not getting up for Mass (à la Mexico City, 1970†) but decided I’d regret it if I didn’t.

So I put on my gray dress and went to Mass at Notre Dame. It’s rather odd-- the organ plays and they have readings and so forth between services. Meanwhile people are walking around taking pictures-- with flash-- and it’s a real zoo. Fortunately things calmed down for the service itself.

There was a copy in French and in three other languages of the readings. What I need is that and the actual eucharistic liturgy, in French. A copy of the sermon wouldn’t hurt, either. The priest spoke, I believe, on not making Christmas a surface thing. Very edifying, I’m sure, if I could’ve understood it.

I still did not feel at all well and hoped to gracious I would not have one of my famous Raging Hormonal Imbalances right in the middle of the service. But I survived to go up and take Communion (one kind only), and to come back to my seat and lose it.

Emotionally, I mean. It wasn’t being there, per se, that did it. It was more the feeling of oh, God, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, and if You don’t let me know, who will? I asked Him to give me some kind of sign as to what He wants me to do . . . somebody bringing something up in a conversation, maybe. I don’t know. What did He give Jim Leffel*‡ when he was struggling over accepting the call to Wilkes-Barre*?

Outside afterwards there was a rather ragtag group in front of the cathedral singing Christmas carols-- in English-- for the Armenian earthquake relief (and that’s what happened there, on top of the delicate political situation).

I headed north and had a bottle of Perrier at the first café I found open. I needed the bubbles. Stomach lousy. Between the Pompidou Center and Les Halles I made myself buy a crepe and eat it, but I wasn’t too happy about it.

Still, there were things I had to do today so I pushed myself. Had to find a florist to sell me some real flowers, for one. And as long as I was fairly close, I thought I’d go up to the Boulevards and see where Berlioz went to music school.

Found the fleurs first, near the rue Montmartre. I had to decide what he would like. I settled on a bunch of those small tulips, yellow and white and dark pink and variegated, with their green stems and leaves. Freesias would’ve done well, too, but the only ones they had were all yellow and looked like cheese popcorn. Definitely wrong.

Walked on over to where the Conservatoire is supposed to be, but unless there is another place in Paris with streets named rue Bergère and rue Faubourg de Montmartre, they’ve demolished the building that was there in the early 19th century and moved the school elsewhere.§ Still, to think that he walked there once, on that pavement, and passed through that air!

Took the Métro to Havre-Canmartin, where I encountered a check. The #13 line, which I needed for both la Cimetière Montmartre and for St. Denis [to see the famous abbey church] was closed. Went on to Villiers to at least reach the former and discovered the #6 line wasn’t going today, either. Transit strike on. So I went back to the Place Europe stop and walked it from there.

The cemetery is under the Rue Calincourt overpass, unlike what is shown on my map. Found the entrance down below, though, and inquired of the uniformed porter where to find it . . . Hector’s got a lane named after him there. And he’s not under the viaduct, thank God.

French urban cemeteries aren’t like American ones. They don’t go in for green grass and well-tended plots. They tend to be little necropoles of miniature chapels and temples all jumbled in cheek by jowl with only drear, sandy soil between.

But thank God, somebody has done something about that ghastly Beaux Arts horror of a tomb that Hector originally had, the picture of which I saw in a book in the Philadelphia Free Library. It was all redone in 1970 in black Andes granite (or something similar) with gold in the incised lettering. The portrait on the medallion isn’t as beautiful as it should be, it doesn’t properly convey his character, but everything is very well tended, there are cyclamens, the pretty dark pink kind, and healthy-looking shrubbery growing in pots that are an integral part of the monument, not like the desiccated chrysanthemums on some nearly tombs, and-- oh, God, Berlioz! Berlioz! I can’t-- I wish-- Oh, Lord, I-- and he’s-- I can’t express it!

One doesn’t go to pieces totally. One mustn’t. There are other people around every so often. And it’s not like he died recently or anything . . . let us be sensible.

I could take refuge in activity. I could at least give him what I brought him. Someone who came earlier had left him a bunch of white chrysanthemums (I was glad to see that); I unbound my tulips and laid them across the other flowers. And I knew I’d chosen the right thing. They’re like him, in a way. Straightforward, unpretentious, colorful in their way, but still sensitive to the rigors of the mundane.

There’s a tree there . . . its roots probably grow down into his grave. It’s very handy when you have no other shoulder to cry on . . . Though I’ve cried on his shoulder often enough, figuratively, singing his songs and reading his memoirs and his letters, taking comfort in knowing there was one who has been through it himself, who could express it all so as to draw it up into ineffable poetry and beauty, one who despite his sins and failings took the gift that God gave him and used it, sublimely . . . I couldn’t help it, I prayed again the prayer I’ve said for the past eleven years, that please, God, in Jesus’ Name, if he can’t actually be saved-- and if there’s any proper way he could be, please effect it!-- please allow his faithfulness to his gift and all the good he’s done through its fulfillment speak grace and amelioration for him in the judgement! Please!

There’s a cross engraved above his name on his monument. I hope it is not there for naught. I wish I could believe the Roman Catholic doctrine that you can be saved by being baptised as an infant. I cannot, but it would be a comfort.

I tried to sing the Te Decet Hymnus for him but my voice broke-- "Ad Te caro omnis veniet!" Yes, but how-- and in what spirit?

There were some fuzzy cats roaming around (none of them black) and one approached now and sat a little ways off, preening herself. I went over and patted her, and, unusually for a French cat, she responded to it. If she’d been [my own cat] Didon I’d’ve picked her up, but she was not.

Then I went back and stood once more before la noire tombe-- mon pauvre Hector! Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine!-- kissed my hand to him, and departed.

Hélas!

Found la Square Berlioz after that, not far from la Place Clichy. The statue there is of him as a younger man than on the medallion of the tomb. It was not carved out of very high quality stone-- it has deteriorated badly. I dislike seeing that. And somehow, though I’m glad he is honored in public sculptures like that, somehow seeing them makes him seem more distant, unlike the portraits. I’ve read that his portrait by Courbet is said to be the only one by that artist that has a spark of life. If so, I’m glad it was Hector’s. Nothing can portray him that does not give you those piercing, wonderful eyes.

The square is largely given over to a large sandbox where children play, and sandy paths where the kids were kicking around a soccer ball. I wonder what he’d think of having his statue placed in a playground. He wasn’t much good at children, except for his son Louis.

Since going to see the abbey church of St. Denis was a bust and it was getting on towards 4:00 anyway, I took the Métro back downtown and got off at the Opéra stop. Had to look at the building which, while not the one that Hector knew, yet houses the institution that only opened its doors to him once.

Ironically, they did the Damnation de Faust, as I saw on a poster in the lobby, on the 8th. If I’d known that I could’ve come in from Chartres, no problem. Damnation, indeed.

They had tours but I just didn’t feel up to it. Browsed the gift shop; they had enamelled composer pins, even one of Hector. But they were just too expensive: 70F.

Over then to les Galeries Lafayette to see if maybe they were running the same sale on slips their branch in Toulouse was.

They weren’t; moreover the only suitable kind of slip they did have was running 225F each and was made in the good old USA. I think I’ll wait till I get back to Oxford.

Close one on the escalator there. It was full of people and as we rode upwards, a fairly good-sized man in his 60's lost his balance just ahead of me. Only my never-that-strong and presently very fatigued left arm and hand desperately clutching the rail kept him and me and everyone else from falling like dominoes. I don’t even think I was holding the righthand rail. I just stiffened up and hoped he’d get his balance before I gave way, too. When he made a grab for the rail he pushed into me worse and I had to step back, crunching the toes of the guy behind me (who wasn’t being any help, I might add). Fortunately the older man regained his footing at that point and aside from a little soreness, I was ok.

Still can’t figure out how I did that. I was feeling extremely yucky. Thank God I was able to, though.

The store was packed with Christmas shoppers and decorated to the hilt. (It’s the same all over, isn’t it?) And then it has that immense stained glass dome over the central court.

Back towards the hotel on the Métro (I might use the busses if I had a bus map. But I don’t, so I don’t). Really dragging by now. Figured I’d better find some food though so I got some junk at a croissanterie on Boul. St. Michel.

Got it and me up to the room-- and just couldn’t face it. Changed my clothes and climbed under the bedspread. Was not going to make it to the organ concert at Notre-Dame at 5:45. No. Listened to the radio, BBC World Service. They were airing their worldwide request program, and played the Hallelujah Chorus. And for the third time today I broke down and cried. Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Made myself work at train schedules for the next two days but other than that accomplished nothing but sleep all evening.
__________________________
†I was part of a high school group that took an Easter weekend trip to Mexico that year. On the Saturday, I, like an idiot, Drank the Water, and woke up the next morning too sick to go to the American church for Easter service. Happily, it was a mild case of MR and passed off by late that afternoon.
‡The immediate past pastor of my home church in Kansas City.
§Turns out I'd come up with the wrong address. The old Conservatoire building was and is still there, three or four blocks away from where I was looking for it.

"The Children's Bread"?

My eyes are closing sideways and my head is dropping into the keyboard, but I thought I'd better update Whomever Might Be Out There with how my dog Magdalen is doing.

Yes, she is still in the land of the living. But it's been up and down since Friday afternoon, with overnights at the local vet's and a stay at the emergency clinic and a blood transfusion and a test for a possible tick-related auto-immune illness (results not back yet) and who knows what all. I visited her at the vet's this afternoon and she's more cheerful, but her nose is still oozing blood and her red cell count is still too low.

Tomorrow we're doing what I thought the other day was beyond possibility: I'm taking her over to the big specialty vet clinic over in Ohio to get the test to see if she really has a tumor or what. I'm not sure which would be worse: a ruptured tumor or an "or what." But after six days of this, I just want to know.

I wonder if I'm turning into one of those neurotic types who lavish on their pets the affection they would've/could've/should've devoted to their children, had they ever had any. But I've never had any and Maddie depends on me, and so I'll do what I can for her.

And if-- no, let's say when she recovers, maybe I should teach her some fancy tricks and she can earn enough to keep us all out of bankruptcy.

"The Life Is in the Blood"

My beautiful dog, Magdalen, is very sick. They say she'll probably die.

She's bleeding from the nose, slowly, since Wednesday night or so, and it won't stop. No, actually, it's getting worse. I've been to two vets yesterday and today, and they both say it's probably from a tumor in her sinuses. So there's nothing, really, they can do.

But they're not totally sure, so she's at the veterinary hospital now, getting fluid through an IV, and some medication to get her blood to clot. I'm to call tomorrow morning to see how she's doing. And to make decisions I'd rather not face.

I can't say this was totally sudden. Maddie hasn't been herself since I returned from interim pastor training in Austin last month. At first it was a backache. From lying around in the kennel nine days and nine nights, the vet said. She's had backaches before. She gets over them. We treated it with pain medication and I waited for her to get better.

But I'd watch her lying on her blanket on my study floor, and she seemed to sleep so stilly, so soundly. I'd actually call her name to rouse her, alarmed by-- what? And when she'd raise her head, she would look uncannily like that bedraggled, diseased, nothing-but-hair-and-bones mutt I helped rescue five years ago. I'd call her and she'd come and I'd smoothen that look away. It's not something I wanted to see.

Her back did get better. She stopped favoring her hindquarters, and went back to sleeping under the bed. But she still didn't have the energy to jump up and sleep on the bed with me and her sister the cat. Well, I figured, she's eight, maybe even nine years old. The muscles take longer to recover.

But two or three days ago I noticed the blood. A little at first. I looked but I couldn't tell where it was coming from, her coat is so long. Then Wednesday night I noticed the dribble from her left nostril. She'd sneeze, and there'd be little drops to clean up, here and there. Yesterday, the nosebleed seemed worse, and I took her to see the vet.

He thought--hoped-- it might only be an infection. After all, she was still eating and drinking with a fine appetite. So he prescribed her an antibiotic and I took her home and gave her her first dose right away. Then I went to work.

When I arrived home yesterday evening, there were bloody sneeze deposits in various places on the bedroom carpet. Oh, Maddie! I realized I'd have to confine her to the bathroom "until she got better."

She didn't like it. She wouldn't settle, even on the bedding I provided. Periodically, I'd hear her scratching at the door. That's when I'd let her out and run her downstairs "hurry, hurry, hurry!" to go outside to relieve herself-- the back pain medication caused her to drink a lot and urinate more, and we didn't need an accident in the closed bathroom. She'd go, then I'd have to harden my heart and shut her in once more.

I didn't go to sleep last night. I was up working on the computer till nearly 4:00 AM. I was restless. Maddie would scratch, I'd let her out. When I'd put her back in, I'd wipe the blood smears off the bathroom floor. A little blood goes a long way, I thought. A little blood.

I wasn't really sleepy at 4:00 this morning. So after I checked on Maddie, I decided to sit in bed and watch the Pope's funeral Mass. I watched till it was over, around 7:00 AM Eastern time. I let Maddie out, but I didn't give her her breakfast. I wish now I had.

I went to sleep till 10:00, when I was awakened by the cat. Rhadwen often-- no, usually-- wakens me in the morning, but this morning it seemed different. I checked on Maddie right away. There was more blood here and there on the bathroom floor, and my dog, my beautiful, playful, shaggy dog, was standing there stiff, as if shellshocked. I petted her, I called her sweet names, and got her to come downstairs and out the back door. But when she went across the porch and through the rip in the screen, she just stood at the top of the porch stairs as if she didn't know what to do. I urged her down into the yard, then went to get Rhadwen's breakfast.

When I next looked out the back door, Maddie wasn't waiting there, eager to come in and eat, as she usually is. She was lying out in the yard, in a patch of sunlight. "Come in, Maddie, poor dog," I urged. "Come in and get your breakfast." She came. She took her antibiotic capsule wrapped in a piece of cheese, but without her usual alacrity (you'd think pills were the greatest treat in the world, the way she jumps for them). And she refused to eat any of her breakfast, or even to take a drink of water.

That's when I knew there was something more serious going on than a little sinus infection. I got dressed, called the vet, wrapped Maddie up in a throw, and took her in.

X-rays, blood counts, an examination, a second opinion examination. All point to the same thing: only a miracle will save my pretty girl. I've always known a day would come when I'd have to let her go, but I'd hoped and expected that wouldn't be for several years yet. We've only been together five years, come the 27th of this month. They say she's not suffering, so I have to try the IV fluids. If I'd just told the vet this morning to put her down, I would always have wondered if I'd acted too precipitously. If I'd given up too soon.

But tomorrow's coming. Whether it's too soon or too late for my Magdalen, tomorrow will tell.