My poor father is still unable to stir from the house, and he has been unwell through a bilious attack, the consequence of want of exercise.  Nothing can induce him to go out in a carriage, because he ’never did in his life drive out for mere amusement,’ he says.  There’s what Mr. Kenyon calls ‘the Barrett obstinacy,’ and it makes me uneasy as to the effect of it in this instance upon the general health of the patient.  Poor darling Arabel seems to me much out of spirits—­’out of humour,’ she calls it, dear thing—­oppressed by the gloom of the house, and looking back yearningly to the time when she had sisters to talk to.  Oh Sarianna, I wish we were all together to have a good gossip or groaning, with a laugh at the end!...

Your ever affectionate sister,
BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

Florence:  November 1854.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­You make me wait and I make you wait for letters.  It is bad of us both—­and remember, worse of you, seeing that you left two long letters of mine unanswered for months.  I felt as if I had fallen down an oubliette, and I was about to utter the loud shrieks befitting the occasion, when you wrote at last.  Don’t treat me so another time; I want to know your plans for the winter, since the winter is upon us.  Next summer, if it pleases God, we shall certainly meet somewhere—­say Paris, say London.  We shall have money for it, which we had not this year; and now the disappointment’s over, I don’t care.  The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and fireflies.  There’s an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini and say, ‘I’m an Italian.’  Certainly both light and love seem stronger with me at Florence than elsewhere....

The war!  The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the justification.  For the rest, one shuts one’s eyes and ears—­the rest is too horrible.  What do you mean by fearing that the war itself may not be all the evil of the war?  I expect, on the contrary, a freer political atmosphere after this thunder.  Louis Napoleon is behaving very tolerably well, won’t you admit, after all?  And I don’t look to a treason at the end as certain of his enemies do, who are reduced to a ’wait, wait, and you’ll see.’  There’s a friend of mine here, a traditional anti-Gallican, and very lively in his politics until the last few months.  He can’t speak now or lift up his eyelids, and I am too magnanimous in opposition to talk of anything else in his presence except Verdi’s last opera, which magnanimity he appreciates, though he has no ear.  About a month ago he came suddenly to life again.  ’Have you heard the news?  Napoleon is suspected of making a secret treaty with Russia.’  The next morning he was as dead as ever—­poor man!  It’s a desperate case for him.