quaint classic cups for the olive
oil. There, seated beside his wife, I was sure to find the Marchese,
reading from some patriotic book, and dressed in the dark brown,
red-corded coat of the Guardia Civica, which it was his melancholy
pleasure to wear at home. So long as the conversation could be carried
on in Italian, he used to remain, though he rarely joined in it to any
considerable degree. If many _forestieri_[H] chanced to drop in, he
betook himself to a neighboring _cafe_,--not absenting himself through
aversion to such visitors, but in the fear lest his silent presence
might weigh upon them."

To complete the picture here given of the Ossoli interior, we should
mention Horace, the youngest brother of Charles Sumner, who was a daily
visitor in this abode of peace. Margaret says of him: "He has solid good
in his mind and heart.... When I am ill, or in a hurry, he helps me like
a brother. Ossoli and Sumner exchange some instruction in English and
Italian."

This young man, remembered by those who knew him as most amiable and
estimable, was abroad at this time for his health, and passed the
winter in Florence. Mr. Hurlbut tells us that he brought Margaret, every
morning, his tribute of fresh wild flowers, and that every evening,
"beside her seat in her little room, his mild, pure face was to be seen,
bright with a quiet happiness," which was in part derived from her
kindness and sympathy.

This brief chronicle of Margaret's last days in Italy would be
incomplete without a few words concerning the enviable position which
she had made for herself in this country of her adoption.

The way in which the intelligence of her marriage was received by her
country-people in Rome and Florence gives the strongest proof of the
great esteem in which they were constrained to hold her. Equally
honorable to her was the friendship of Madame Arconati, a lady of high
rank and higher merit, beloved and revered as few were in the Milan of
that day. She was the friend of Joseph Mazzini, and shared with George
Sand and Elizabeth Barrett Browning the honors of prominence in the
liberal movement and aspiration of the time. But it is in her
intercourse with the people at large that we shall find the deepest
evidence of her true humanity. Hers was no barren creed, divorced from
beneficent action. The wounded soldiers in the hospital, the rude
peasants of Rieti, knew her heart, and thought of her as "a mild saint
and ministering angel."[I