ld,

What I want principally to say is just _don't worry_. Don't
worry for fear I'll come, and don't worry for fear I won't
understand, and don't worry because you think my feelings may be
hurt. And above all the rest, don't worry about
_gratitude_, for I don't feel you owe me any at all. Don't
you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not as
sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how
would you have got over it so soon? You were not near as sick,
according to all accounts, as poor Busteretto, who has been
having what they call here the _cimurro_. I took you in
hand because _I am a nurse_ and I couldn't keep my hands
off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when
he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had
been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in
just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for
gratitude. Put it out of your mind.

Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand.
I am very sorry I can't give it back, because I flung it out in
the middle of the river. That is what I did with it, and I am
not sorry either. You know that we at home don't look upon
certain things as you apparently do over here. We think it a
disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fashioned
enough to think that that door leads to hell. I have been
astonished to find that over here it is thought quite
respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an honorable
way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of
getting over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good
many foreign ideas, and as you have once or twice made a remark
that showed me you thought of that solution of difficulties as a
possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when I found it in
the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno.
Don't get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your
house to steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you
are so blue you feel like killing yourself, say your prayers. I
am very glad your friend the abbe is going to come and stay with
you. He is a _good influence_, I feel sure, and a good
friend.

I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don't do
the visiting. But don't be in any hurry, not on my a