ran into its ancient pattern, thank God, and kept me only very ill, with violent cough all night long; my poor Robert, who nursed me like an angel, prevented from sleeping for full three weeks.  When there was a possibility I was lifted into a carriage and brought here; stayed two days at the inn in Siena, and then removed to this pleasant airy villa.  Very ill I was after coming, and great courage it required to come; but change of air was absolutely a condition of living, and the event justified the risk.  For now I am quite myself, have done crying ‘Wolf,’ and end this lamentable history by desiring you to absolve me for my silence.  We have been here nearly a month.  My strength, which was so exhausted that I could scarcely stand unsupported, is coming back satisfactorily, and the cough has ceased to vex me at all.  Still, I am not equal to driving out.  I hope to take my first drive in a very few days though, and the very asses are ministering to me—­in milk.  All the English physicians had found it convenient (the beloved Grand Duke being absent) to leave Florence, and Zanetti was attending the Piedmontese hospitals, so that I had to attend me none of the old oracles—­only a Prussian physician (Dr. Gresonowsky), a very intelligent man, of whom we knew a little personally, and who had a strong political sympathy with me. (He and I used to sit together on Isa Blagden’s terrace and relieve ourselves by abusing each other’s country; and whether he expressed most moral indignation against England or I against Prussia, remained doubtful.) Afterwards he came to cure me, and was as generous in his profession as became his politics.  People are usually very kind to us, I must say.  Think of that man following us to Siena, uninvited, and attending me at the hotel two days, then refusing recompense.

Well, now let me speak of our Italy and the peace.  ‘Immoral,’ you say?  Yes, immoral.  But not immoral on the part of Napoleon who had his hand forced; only immoral on the part of those who by infamies of speech and intrigue (in England and Germany), against which I for one had been protesting for months, brought about the complicated results which forced his hand.  Never was a greater or more disinterested deed intended and almost completed than this French intervention for Italian independence; and never was a baser and more hideous sight than the league against it of the nations.  Let me not speak.

For the rest, if it were not for Venetia (Zurich[65] keeps its secrets so far) the peace would have proved a benefit rather than otherwise.  We have had time to feel our own strength, to stand on our own feet.  The vain talk about Napoleon’s intervening militarily on behalf of the Grand Duke has simply been the consequence of statements without foundation in the English and German papers; and also in some French Ultramontane papers.  Napoleon with his own lips, after the peace, assured our delegates that no force should be used.  And he has repeated