But, dearest Mona Nina, if you want to get calumniated, hated, lied upon, and spat upon (in a spiritual sense), try and do a good deed from disinterested motives in this world.  That’s my lesson.

I have been told upon rather good authority that Cavour’s retirement is simply a feint, and that he will recover his position presently.

What weighs on my heart is Venetia.  Can they do anything at Zurich to modify that heavy fact?

You see I am not dead yet, dear, dearest friend.  And while alive at all, I can’t help being in earnest on these questions.  I am a Ba, you know.  Forgive me when I get too much ‘riled’ by your England.

You will know by this time that the ‘proposition’ you approved of was French.

What made the very help of Prussia unacceptable to Austria was the circumstance of Prussia’s using that opportunity of Austria’s need to wriggle herself to the military headship of the Confederation.  Austria would rather have lost Lombardy (and more) than have accepted such a disadvantage.  Hence the coldness, the cause of which is scarcely avowable.  Selfish and pitiful nations!

Dear Isa Blagden writes me all the political news of Florence.  She is well, and will come to pay us a visit before long.  We remain here till September ends, and then return to Casa Guidi.

I had a letter from Bologna from Jessie, which threw me into a terror lest the Mazzinians should come to Italy just in time to ruin us.  The letter (not unkind to me) was as contrary to facts and reason as possible.  I was too ill to write at the time, and Robert would not let me answer it afterwards.

[The remainder of this letter is missing.]

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

Villa Alberti, Siena:  September [1859].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­As you talk of palpitations and the newspapers, and then tell me or imply that you are confined for light and air to the ‘Times’ on the Italian question, I am moved with sympathy and compassion for you, and anxious not to lose a post in answering your letter.  My dear, dear friends, I beseech you to believe nothing which you have read, are reading, or are likely to read in the ‘Times’ newspaper, unless it contradicts all that went before.  The criminal conduct of that paper from first to last, and the immense amount of injury it has occasioned in the world, make me feel that the hanging of the Smethursts and Ellen Butlers would be irredeemable cruelty while these writers are protected by the Law....

Of course you must feel perplexed.  The paper takes up different sets of falsities, quite different and contradictory, and treats them as facts, and writes ‘leaders’ on them, as if they were facts.  The reader, at last, falls into a state of confusion, and sees nothing clearly except that somehow or other, for something that he has done or hasn’t done, has intended or hasn’t intended, Louis Napoleon is a rascal, and we ought to hate him and his.