[10] He subsequently discovered that it was a loan, and insisted on repaying it shortly before his death.
[11] The only evidence for this is contained in Cagnacci, Giuseppe Mazzini e i fratelli Ruffini, pp. 287, 290, from which it seems probable that Mazzini saw Madame Ruffini between June and November, 1844, and therefore, almost certainly, was at Genoa. Signor Donaver thinks it doubtful whether la Cugina of the Ruffinis' letters refers to Mazzini, but the internal evidence seems to me to favour the identification. Signor Cagnacci's note on p. 290 seems to imply that he has seen a memorandum by Elia Benza to the effect that Benza saw him at Porto Maurizio about this time disguised as a Capucin.
[12] Carlyle's statement (Reminiscences, ii. 182) that he "once or twice" talked with Mazzini is rather startlingly inaccurate. See Carlyle's Life in London, i. 488.
[13] There are some interesting descriptions of the Carlyles in Giovanni Ruffini's letters to his mother. See Cagnacci, op. cit.
[14] Madame Mario says in her Della vita di Mazzini, in the middle of 1838; but I think it is quite clear from Lettres intimes, 197 and 205; Giurati, op. cit., 11-12; Cagnacci, op. cit., 447 that 1839 is the true date.
[16] According to Madame Venturi (English Edition of Mazzini, V. 96) the King offered him the premiership; but neither Mazzini himself, nor, so far as I know, any of the memoirs of the time mention it. For other overtures from the government see Donaver in Rassegna Nazionale, Dec. 1, 1898.
[17] See below, c. xvii.
[18] I owe these particulars to one who knew him well, and to a contemporary description in a private letter.
[19] It has often been supposed that Browning had Mazzini in mind, when he wrote The Italian in England. I know of no evidence for or against this; but the poem was written in 1845, when the letter-opening affair had made Mazzini prominently public. Mazzini is said to have made a translation of it.