What you say of the meddling curiosity of people repels me, it is so different here.  When I made my appearance with a husband and a child of a year old, nobody did the least act to annoy me.  All were most cordial; none asked or implied questions.  Yet there were not a few who might justly have complained, that, when they were confiding to me all their affairs, and doing much to serve me, I had observed absolute silence to them.  Others might, for more than one reason, be displeased at the choice I made.  All have acted in the kindliest and most refined manner.  An Italian lady, with whom I was intimate,—­who might be qualified in the Court Journal, as one of the highest rank, sustained by the most scrupulous decorum,—­when I wrote, “Dear friend, I am married; I have a child.  There are particulars, as to my reasons for keeping this secret, I do not wish to tell.  This is rather an odd affair; will it make any difference in our relations?”—­answered, “What difference can it make, except that I shall love you more, now that we can sympathize as mothers?” Her first visit here was to me:  she adopted at once Ossoli and the child to her love.

——­ wrote me that ——­ was a little hurt, at first, that I did not tell him, even in the trying days of Rome, but left him to hear it, as he unluckily did, at the table d’hote in Venice; but his second and prevailing thought was regret that he had not known it, so as to soothe and aid me,—­to visit Ossoli at his post,—­to go to the child in the country.  Wholly in that spirit was the fine letter he wrote me, one of my treasures.  The little American society have been most cordial and attentive; one lady, who has been most intimate with me, dropped a tear over the difficulties before me, but she said, “Since you have seen fit to take the step, all your friends have to do, now, is to make it as easy for you as they can.”

TO MRS. E.S.

I am glad to have people favorably impressed, because I feel lazy and weak, unequal to the trouble of friction, or the pain of conquest.  Still, I feel a good deal of contempt for those so easily disconcerted or reaessured.  I was not a child; I had lived in the midst of that New England society, in a way that entitled me to esteem, and a favorable interpretation, where there was doubt about my motives or actions.  I pity those who are inclined to think ill, when they might as well have inclined the other way.  However, let them go; there are many in the world who stand the test, enough to keep us from shivering to death.  I am, on the whole, fortunate in friends whom I can truly esteem, and in whom I know the kernel and substance of their being too well to be misled by seemings.

TO MRS. C.T.