e 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 doubt