For the rest even I ought to have comfort, I know.  I believe that love in its most human relations is an eternal thing.  I do believe it, only through inconsistency and much weakness I falter.

Also there are other beliefs with me with regard to the spiritual world and the measuring of death, which ought, if I had ordinary logic, to rescue me from what people in general suffer in circumstances like these.  Only I am weak and foolish; and when the tender past came back to me day by day, I have dropped down before it as one inconsolable.

Dearest Mr. Martin—­give him my grateful love for every kind thought, and to yourself.

Now that page is turned.

I wish I knew that you were stronger, and at Pau.  It is unfortunate that just on this bitter winter you have been unable to get away from England.

Here, though there was snow once, we have fared mildly as to climate.  And our rooms are very warm.  Penini has his pony and rides, and studies with his Abbe, and looks very rosy and well.  I help him to prepare his lessons, but that is all, except hearing him read a little German now and then, and Robert sees to the music, and the getting up of the arithmetic.  For the first time I have had pain in looking into his face lately—­which you will understand.

I saw a man from Naples two days since, an Englishman of intelligence and impartiality, who has resided there for months in the heart of the politics.  He told me that the exaggeration of evils was great.  Evils there were certainly; and no government succeeding Garibaldi’s could have satisfied a public trained to expect the impossible.  Our poor Garibaldi, hero as he is, and an honest hero, is in truth the weakest and most malleable of men, and had become at last the mere mouthpiece of the Mazzinians.  If the Bourbons’ fall had not been a little delayed, north and south Italy would have broken in two.  So I was assured by my friend, who gave reasons and showed facts.

That the Neapolitans are not equal to the other Italians is too plain; and if corrupt governments did not corrupt the government they would be less hateful to all of us, of course.  But a little time will give smoothness to the affairs of Italy, and none of my old hopes are in the meanwhile disturbed.

The design as to Rome seems to be to starve out the Pope by the financial question; to let the rotten fruit fall at last as much by its own fault as possible, and by the gentlest shake of the tree.  I hear of those who doubted most in the Emperor’s designs beginning to confess that he can’t mean ill by Italy.

Possibly you and dear Mr. Martin think more just now of America than of this country, which I can understand.  The crisis has come earlier than anyone expected.  It is a crisis; and if the north accepts such a compromise as has been proposed the nation perishes morally, which would be sadder than the mere dissolution of States, however sad.  It is the difference between the death of the soul and of the body.