ing away of Madame. Coming and going bring
very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if _you_ were
to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my
particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a
cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind
words you say of _him_, who deserves the best words of the best women
and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should
have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it.
You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly
to understand what he is, of himself, and to me--the noblest and
perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months' absolute
soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my
first ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these things,
for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart
which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar
destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not
allude to farther....

May God bless you continually, even as I am

Your affectionate
BA.

[Footnote 179: The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule
had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war between
Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some initial
successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was temporarily
closed by an armistice in August.]

_To Mrs. Jameson_
Palazzo Guidi: July 15, [1848].

Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you, and the
reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly
any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn't it your fault after all, a
little, that we did not hear one another's voice oftener? You are
_so long_ in writing. Then I have been putting off and putting off my
letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and
Robert always says that it's the bane of a correspondence to make a
full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell
you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew.
Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we
think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don't
write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more
regularly, indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was
very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with the book, and