social conditions, though that is
an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a
barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.

"Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by
disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even
while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and
most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of
life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for
him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every
embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss
the chill breath of the tomb.

"Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her
miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of
God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things
well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,
without hope or dreams.

"Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here
first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt
at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported
without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them
in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of
the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.

"I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's
name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws
of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have
never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me
still, and though the court which condemned me was a military
court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I
see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in
five, ten, twenty years in a cell.

"What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor
consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,
conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging
myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,
it would be wrong and wicked.

"No, it is impossible. You cannot but be aware that my life or
liberty is in serious jeopardy, and that my place in Parliament
and in public life is in constant and hourly peril. Every letter
that you have written to m