But in any case, whatever may have been her physical dimensions, they were not understated by the crowd who gave vent to their aversion in this and in many other deplorable ways.  There are only a few evidences of Nelson being aware of and resenting some of the disparaging remarks made about his “wife in the sight of Heaven,” and these do not seem to have diminished his infatuation for her.  He was accustomed to say in connection with his professional duties that whenever he followed his own head he was in general much more correct in his judgment than by following other people’s opinions.  He carried this plan into his private life so far as Emma was concerned, but men and women who were his intimate friends would not support the view that by following his head in this particular case his judgment was sound.  We may term the infatuation a deteriorated state of mind, but he was sustained by the belief that she was a spirit unto him while he lived, and with his last gasp, as he was passing into the shadows, he bestowed her as a legacy to his country.  We shall have something to say hereafter as to how the British Government dealt with their great Admiral’s dying injunction.

The Neapolitan atmosphere was vile enough, and might well have made even men and women who knew the loose side of life shrink from it, but it can never be claimed that it had a demoralizing influence on Emma, who at an early age became familiar with unspeakable vices which left her little to learn at the time Greville sold her to his uncle, who took her to a centre of sordid uncleanness, there to become his wife after a brief association as his mistress.  We may have no misgiving as to her aptitude in acquiring anything she chose that was left for her to learn from a community of debauchees and parasites.

The wonder is that her brain did not succumb to the poisonous influences by which she was surrounded, and that the poor girl did not sink into the depths of that luxurious sensuality which characterized Neapolitan society at that time.  It was a more distinguished and fascinating type of debauchery than that which she had known in other days in England, and from which Greville had rescued her.  The temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order of depravity than that to which she had been accustomed must have been very great to such a temperament as hers.  But she worthily kept her wild, wayward spirit under restraint, and, according to Sir William Hamilton, she conducted herself in a way that caused him to be satisfied with his reforming guidance.  She adapted herself to the ways of the more select social community of her new existence, and at the time Nelson made her acquaintance she had really become a creditable member of the society in which she moved.  In every respect she was congenial to him.  He never lost a chance of applauding her gifts and brazenly exempting himself from all moral restrictions, except,