INE

'Rome.
'Let the post-mark be my reply to your letter received through the
Consulate, and most courteously delivered with the Consul's compliments.
We shall yet have an ambassador at Rome--mark your Louisa's words. Yes,
dearest! I am here, body and spirit! I have at last found a haven, a
refuge, and let those who condemn me compare the peace of their spirits
with mine. You think that you have quite conquered the dreadfulness of
our origin. My love, I smile at you! I know it to be impossible for
the Protestant heresy to offer a shade of consolation. Earthly-born,
it rather encourages earthly distinctions. It is the sweet sovereign
Pontiff alone who gathers all in his arms, not excepting tailors. Here,
if they could know it, is their blessed comfort!

'Thank Harriet for her message. She need say nothing. By refusing me
her hospitality, when she must have known that the house was as free of
creditors as any foreigner under the rank of Count is of soap, she drove
me to Mr. Duflian. Oh! how I rejoice at her exceeding unkindness! How
warmly I forgive her the unsisterly--to say the least--vindictiveness of
her unaccountable conduct! Her sufferings will one day be terrible. Good
little Andrew supplies her place to me. Why do you refuse his easily
afforded bounty? No one need know of it. I tell you candidly, I take
double, and the small good punch of a body is only too delighted. But
then, I can be discreet.

'Oh! the gentlemanliness of these infinitely maligned Jesuits! They
remind me immensely of Sir Charles Grandison, and those frontispiece
pictures to the novels we read when girls--I mean in manners and the
ideas they impose--not in dress or length of leg, of course. The same
winning softness; the same irresistible ascendancy over the female mind!
They require virtue for two, I assure you, and so I told Silva, who
laughed.

'But the charms of confession, my dear! I will talk of Evan first.
I have totally forgiven him. Attache to the Naples embassy, sounds
tol-lol. In such a position I can rejoice to see him, for it permits me
to acknowledge him. I am not sure that, spiritually, Rose will be his
most fitting helpmate. However, it is done, and I did it, and there
is no more to be said. The behaviour of Lord Laxley in refusing to
surrender a young lady who declared that her heart was with another,
exceeds all I could have supposed. One of the noble peers among
his ancestors must have been a pig!