The friends with whom she seemed to be on the terms of most sympathy, were an Italian lady, the Marchesa Arconati Visconti,[A]—­the exquisite sweetness of whose voice interpreted, even to those who knew her only as a transient acquaintance, the harmony of her nature,—­and some English residents in Florence, among whom I need only name Mr. and Mrs. Browning, to satisfy the most anxious friends of Madame Ossoli that the last months of her Italian life were cheered by all the light that communion with gifted and noble natures could afford.

The Marchesa Arconati used to persuade Madame Ossoli to occasional excursions with her into the environs of Florence, and she passed some days of the beautiful spring weather at the villa of that lady.

Her delight in nature seemed to be a source of great comfort and strength to her.  I shall not easily forget the account she gave me, on the evening of one delicious Sunday in April, of a walk which she had taken with her husband in the afternoon of that day, to the hill of San Miniato.  The amethystine beauty of the Apennines,—­the cypress trees that sentinel the way up to the ancient and deserted church,—­the church itself, standing high and lonely on its hill, begirt with the vine-clad, crumbling walls of Michel Angelo,—­the repose of the dome-crowned city in the vale below,—­seemed to have wrought their impression with peculiar force upon her mind that afternoon.  On their way home, they had entered the conventual church that stands half way up the hill, just as the vesper service was beginning, and she spoke of the simple spirit of devotion that filled the place, and of the gentle wonder with which, to use her own words, the “peasant women turned their glances, the soft dark glances of the Tuscan peasant’s eyes,” upon the strangers, with a singular enthusiasm.  She was in the habit of taking such walks with her husband, and she never returned from one of them, I believe, without some new impression of beauty and of lasting truth.  While her judgment, intense in its sincerity, tested, like an aqua regia, the value of all facts that came within her notice, her sympathies seemed, by an instinctive and unerring action, to transmute all her experiences instantly into permanent treasures.

The economy of the house in which she lived afforded me occasions for observing the decisive power, both of control and of consolation, which she could exert over others.  Her maid,—­an impetuous girl of Rieti, a town which rivals Tivoli as a hot-bed of homicide,—­was constantly involved in disputes with a young Jewess, who occupied the floor above Madame Ossoli.  On one occasion, this Jewess offered the maid a deliberate and unprovoked insult.  The girl of Rieti, snatching up a knife, ran up stairs to revenge herself after her national fashion.  The porter’s little daughter followed her and, running into Madame Ossoli’s rooms, besought her interference.  Madame Ossoli reached the apartment