I have shed rivers of tears over the inexpressibly affecting letter thus begun.  One would think I might have become familiar enough with images of death and destruction; yet somehow the image of Pickie’s little dancing figure, lying, stiff and stark, between his parents, has made me weep more than all else.  There was little hope he could do justice to himself, or lead a happy life in so perplexed a world; but never was a character of richer capacity,—­never a more charming child.  To me he was most dear, and would always have been so.  Had he become stained with earthly faults, I could never have forgotten what he was when fresh from the soul’s home, and what he was to me when my soul pined for sympathy, pure and unalloyed.

The three children I have seen who were fairest in my eyes, and gave most promise of the future, were Waldo, Pickie, Hermann Clarke;—­all nipped in the bud.  Endless thoughts has this given me, and a resolve to seek the realization of all hopes and plans elsewhere, which resolve will weigh with me as much as it can weigh before the silver cord is finally loosed.  Till then, Earth, our mother, always finds strange, unexpected ways to draw us back to her bosom,—­to make us seek anew a nutriment which has never failed to cause us frequent sickness.

* * * * *

This brings me to the main object of my present letter,—­a piece of intelligence about myself, which I had hoped I might be able to communicate in such a way as to give you pleasure.  That I cannot,—­after suffering much in silence with that hope,—­is like the rest of my earthly destiny.

The first moment, it may cause you a pang to know that your eldest child might long ago have been addressed by another name than yours, and has a little son a year old.

But, beloved mother, do not feel this long.  I do assure you, that it was only great love for you that kept me silent.  I have abstained a hundred times, when your sympathy, your counsel, would have been most precious, from a wish not to harass you with anxiety.  Even now I would abstain, but it has become necessary, on account of the child, for us to live publicly and permanently together; and we have no hope, in the present state of Italian affairs, that we can do it at any better advantage, for several years, than now.

My husband is a Roman, of a noble but now impoverished house.  His mother died when he was an infant, his father is dead since we met, leaving some property, but encumbered with debts, and in the present state of Rome hardly available, except by living there.  He has three older brothers, all provided for in the Papal service,—­one as Secretary of the Privy Chamber, the other two as members of the Guard Noble.  A similar career would have been opened to him, but he embraced liberal principles, and, with the fall of the Republic, has lost all, as well as the favor of his family, who all sided with the Pope.  Meanwhile, having been an officer in the Republican service, it was best for him to leave Rome.  He has taken what little money he had, and we plan to live in Florence for the winter.  If he or I can get the means, we shall come together to the United States, in the summer;—­earlier we could not, on account of the child.