As to fanaticism, it depends on a defect of intellect rather than on an excess of the adoring faculty.  The latter cannot, I think, be too fully developed.  How I shall like you to see our Wiedeman!  He is a radiant little creature, really, yet he won’t talk; he does nothing but gesticulate, only making his will and pleasure wonderfully clear and supreme, I assure you.  He’s a tyrant, ready made for your theory.  If your book is ‘better than I expect,’ what will it be?  God bless you!  Be well, and love me, and write to me, for I am your ever affectionate

BA.

To Mrs. Martin Florence:  January 30, 1851.

Here I am at last, dearest friend.  But you forget how you told me, when you wrote your ‘long letter,’ that you were going away into chaos somewhere, and that your address couldn’t be known yet.  It was this which made me delay the answer to that welcome letter—­and to begin to ‘put off’ is fatal, as perhaps you know.  Now forgive me, and I will behave better in future, indeed....

I am quite well, and looking well, they say; but the frightful illness of the autumn left me paler and thinner long after the perfect recovery.  The physician told Robert afterwards that few women would have recovered at all; and when I left Siena I was as able to walk, and as well in every respect as ever, notwithstanding everything—­think, for instance, of my walking to St. Miniato, here in Florence!  You remember, perhaps, what that pull is.  I dare say you heard from Henrietta how we enjoyed our rustication at Siena.  It is pleasant even to look back on it.  We were obliged to look narrowly at the economies, more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the place suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent among the vines, charmed us, though the doors didn’t shut, and though (on account of the smallness) Robert and I had to whisper all our talk whenever Wiedeman was asleep.  Oh, I wish you were in Italy.  I wish you had come here this winter which has been so mild, and which, with ordinary prudence, would certainly have suited dear Mr. Martin....  I tried to dissuade the Peytons from making the experiment, through the fear of its not answering....  We can’t get them into society, you see, because we are out of it, having struggled to keep out of it with hands and feet, and partially having succeeded, knowing scarcely anybody except bringers of letters of introduction, and those chiefly Americans and not residents in Florence.  The other day, however, Mrs. Trollope and her daughter-in-law called on us, and it is settled that we are to know them; though Robert had made a sort of vow never to sit in the same room with the author of certain books directed against liberal institutions and Victor Hugo’s poetry.  I had a longer battle to fight, on the matter of this vow, than any since my marriage, and had some scruples at last of taking advantage of the pure goodness which induced him to yield to my wishes;