Dearest Isa, I miss you, and love you.  How perfect you are to me always.

Robert’s true love, with Pen’s.  And I may send my love to Miss Field, may I not?

Yours, in tender affection,
BA.

Do write, and tell me everything.

Yes, England will do a little dabbling about constitutions and the like where there’s nothing to lose or risk; and why does Mrs. Trollope say ‘God bless them’ for it? I never will forgive England the most damnable part she has taken on Italian affairs, never.  The pitiful cry of ‘invasion’ is the continuation of that hound’s cry, observe.  Must we live and bear?

* * * * *

To Miss E.F.  Haworth

Villa Alberti, Siena:  August 24, 1859 [postmark].

Dearest Fanny,—­This is only to say that I wrote to you before your letter reached me, directing mine simply to the post-office of Cologne, and that I write now lest what went before should miss for want of the more specific address.  Thank you, dear friend, for caring to hear of my health; that, at least, is pleasant.  I keep recovering strength by air, quiet, and asses’ milk, and by hope for Italy, which consolidates itself more and more.

You will wonder at me, but these public affairs have half killed me.  You know I can’t take things quietly.  Your complaint and mine, Fanny, are just opposite.  For weeks and weeks, in my feverish state, I never closed my eyes without suffering ‘punishment’ under eternal articles of peace and unending lists of provisional governments.  Do you wonder?

Observe—­I believe entirely in the Emperor.  He did at Villafranca what he could not help but do.  Since then, he has simply changed the arena of the struggle; he is walking under the earth instead of on the earth, but straight and to unchanged ends.

This country, meanwhile, is conducting itself nobly.  It is worthy of becoming a great nation.

And God for us all!

So you go to England really?  Which I doubted, till your letter came.

It is well that you did not spend the summer here, for the heat has been ferocious; hotter, people from Corfu say, than it was ever felt there.  Italy, however, is apt to be hottish in the summer, as we know very well.

The country about here, though not romantic like Lucca, is very pretty, and our windows command sunsets and night winds.  I have not stirred out yet after three weeks of it; you may suppose how reduced I must be.  I could scarcely stand at one time.  The active evil, however, is ended, and strength comes somehow or other.  Robert has had the perfect goodness not only to nurse me, but to teach Peni, who is good too, and rides a pony just the colour of his curls, to his pure delight.  Then we have books and newspapers, English and Italian—­the books from Florence—­so we do beautifully.