f my life, like an unnaturally prolonged sleep.
New influence added in this direction might have driven me insane,
while the diversion afforded by Valeria's counter-enthusiasm and the
necessity of making an active defence of my own, roused me, and
brought back the blood to the surface of my life. It was, therefore,
partly an instinct of self-preservation which led me to Valeria,--and
she saved me--my noble wife saved me for other destinies.

We returned to Paris, where I resumed and completed my medical
studies, and I had just graduated when the war broke out in Italy.

Four happy, healthful years had completely restored my mental
equilibrium. I was no longer an extravagant fanatic, prepared for a
cloister or a crusade, but still a tolerably ardent ultra-montanist,
pivoted upon the theory of the temporal power of the Pope. Valeria's
influence, in modifying the superficial exuberance of my enthusiasm,
had only rendered its energy more practical, more eager for an
opportunity to incarnate its ideal in vigorous facts. Now the
opportunity had arrived, and the enthusiasm blazed forth afresh; all
interests, all consciousness of other ties were absorbed in devotion
to the Church of which I felt myself a not unimportant member. My
fortune, my time, my life, were all too little to place at its
disposal, and I hastened to enrol myself on the medical staff of a
regiment of Papal Zouaves. Valeria, who had always reasoned against my
theories, was too consistent herself to oppose me in putting them into
practice, but she insisted on accompanying me to Italy. We parted at
Civita Vecchia, I to go to Rome, she, with our two children, to
Naples, where her family had formerly resided. She wrote to me every
day, but after several weeks came a blank of three days without a
letter. At the same moment arrived the news that the cholera was
raging at Naples--news which rendered most ominous this sudden
interruption of the correspondence. I obtained leave of absence and
hurried south, to learn that my wife and babies were dead--fallen
among the very first victims of the pestilence.

Stunned and heart-sick, I returned to Rome, anxious to devote myself
to the cause with the more desperate earnestness that it was the only
living interest left to me in the world. I arrived just before the
battle of Montana, and regretted that fortune had not assigned me a
role among the soldiers of the cross, among those who might embrace a
welcome death, in exch