Mr. Landor is here.  There’s a long story.  Absolute revolution and abdication from the Florence villa.  He appeared one day at our door of Casa Guidi, with an oath on his soul never to go back.  The end of it all is, that Robert has accepted office as Landor’s guardian (!!) and is to ‘see to him’ at the request of his family in England; and there’s to be an arrangement for Wilson to undertake him in a Florence apartment, which she is pleased at.  He visited the Storys, who are in a villa here (the only inhabitants), and were very kind to him.  Now he is in rooms in a house not far from us, waiting till we return to Florence.  I have seen him only once, and then he looked better than he did in Florence, where he seemed dropping into the grave, scarcely able to walk a hundred yards.  He longs for England, but his friends do not encourage his return, and so the best that can be done for him must be.  Now he is in improved spirits and has taken to writing Latin alcaics on Garibaldi, which is refreshing, I suppose.

Ask at the post-office for my letter, but don’t fancy that it may be a line more lively than this.  No alcaics from me!  One soul has gone from me, at least, the soul that writes letters.

May God bless you, dearest, kindest Fanny.  Love me a little.  Don’t leave off feeling ‘on private affairs’ too much for that.

Robert’s best love with that of your loving
BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

Villa Alberti, Siena:  August 26 [1859].

Dearest friend, what have you thought of me?

I was no more likely to write to you about the ‘peace’ than about any stroke of personal calamity.  The peace fell like a bomb on us all, and for my part, you may still find somewhere on the ground splinters of my heart, if you look hard.  But by the time your letter reached me we had recovered the blow spiritually, had understood that it was necessary, and that the Emperor Napoleon, though forced to abandon one arena, was prepared to carry on the struggle for Italy on another.

Therefore I should have answered your letter at once if I had not been seized with illness.  Indeed, my dear, dear friend, you will hear from me no excuses.  I have not been unkind, simply incapable.

I believe it was the violent mental agitation, the reaction from a state of exultation and joy in which I had been walking among the stars so many months; and the grief, anxiety, the struggle, the talking, all coming on me at a moment when the ferocious heat had made the body peculiarly susceptible; but one afternoon I went down to the Trollopes, had sight of the famous Ducal orders about bombarding Florence, and came home to be ill.  Violent palpitations and cough; in fact, the worst attack on the chest I ever had in Italy.  For two days and two nights it was more like angina pectoris, as I have heard it described; but this went off, and the complaint