I had a letter from my mother, last summer, speaking of the fact, that she had never been present at the marriage of one of her children.  A pang of remorse came as I read it, and I thought, if Angelino dies,[A] I will not give her the pain of knowing that I have kept this secret from her;—­she shall hear of this connection, as if it were something new.  When I found he would live, I wrote to her and others.  It half killed me to write those few letters, and yet, I know, many are wondering that I did not write more, and more particularly.  My mother received my communication in the highest spirit.  She said, she was sure a first object with me had been, now and always, to save her pain.  She blessed us.  She rejoiced that she should not die feeling there was no one left to love me with the devotion she thought I needed.  She expressed no regret at our poverty, but offered her feeble means.  Her letter was a noble crown to her life of disinterested, purifying love.

[Footnote A:  This was when Margaret found Nino so ill at Rieti.]

FLORENCE.

The following notes respecting Margaret’s residence in Florence were furnished to the editors by Mr. W.H.  Hurlbut.

I passed about six weeks in the city of Florence, during the months of March and April, 1850.  During the whole of that time Madame Ossoli was residing in a house at the corner of the Via della Misericordia and the Piazza Santa Maria Novella.  This house is one of those large, well built modern houses that show strangely in the streets of the stately Tuscan city.  But if her rooms were less characteristically Italian, they were the more comfortable, and, though small, had a quiet, home-like air.  Her windows opened upon a fine view of the beautiful Piazza; for such was their position, that while the card-board facade of the church of Sta.  Maria Novella could only be seen at an angle, the exquisite Campanile rose fair and full against the sky.  She enjoyed this most graceful tower very much, and, I think, preferred it even to Giotto’s noble work.  Its quiet religious grace was grateful to her spirit, which seemed to be yearning for peace from the cares that had so vexed and heated the world about her for a year past.

I saw her frequently at these rooms, where, surrounded by her books and papers, she used to devote her mornings to her literary labors.  Once or twice I called in the morning, and found her quite immersed in manuscripts and journals.  Her evenings were passed usually in the society of her friends, at her own rooms, or at theirs.  With the pleasant circle of Americans, then living in Florence, she was on the best terms, and though she seemed always to bring with her her own most intimate society, and never to be quite free from the company of busy thoughts, and the cares to which her life had introduced her, she was always cheerful, and her remarkable powers of conversation subserved on all occasions the kindliest, purposes of good-will in social intercourse.