sisted on the necessity of change of air (for my part, I seemed to
myself more fit to change the world than the air), and Robert carried
me into the railroad like a baby, and off we came here to Siena. We
took a villa a mile and _a_ half from the town, a villa situated on a
windy hill (called 'poggio al vento'), with magnificent views from
all the windows, and set in the midst of its own vineyard and olive
ground, apple trees and peach trees, not to speak of a little square
flower-garden, for which we pay _eleven shillings one penny
farthing the week_; and at the end of these three weeks, our medical
comforter's prophecy, to which I listened so incredulously, is
fulfilled, and I am able to walk a mile, and am really as well as ever
in all essential respects.... Our poor little darling, too (see
what disasters!), was ill four-and-twenty hours from a species of
sunstroke, and frightened us with a heavy hot head and glassy staring
eyes, lying in a half-stupor. Terrible, the silence that fell suddenly
upon the house, without the small pattering feet and the singing
voice. But God spared us; he grew quite well directly and sang louder
than ever. Since we came here his cheeks have turned into roses....

What still further depressed me during our latter days at Florence
was the dreadful event in America--the loss of our poor friend Madame
Ossoli,[204] affecting in itself, and also through association with
that past, when the arrowhead of anguish was broken too deeply into my
life ever to be quite drawn out. Robert wanted to keep the news
from me till I was stronger, but we live too _close_ for him to keep
anything from me, and then I should have known it from the first
letter or visitor, so there was no use trying. The poor Ossolis spent
part of their last evening in Italy with us, he and she and their
child, and we had a note from her off Gibraltar, speaking of the
captain's death from smallpox. Afterwards it appears that her
child caught the disease and lay for days between life and death;
_recovered_, and then came the final agony. 'Deep called unto deep,'
indeed. Now she is where there is no more grief and 'no more sea;' and
none of the restless in this world, none of the ship-wrecked in heart
ever seemed to me to want peace more than she did. We saw much of her
last winter; and over a great gulf of differing opinion we both felt
drawn strongly to her. High and pure aspiration she had--yes, and a
tender woman's heart--and