“The Ambassador’s wife she is very beautiful.”
“She is the loveliest woman on earth,” he said warmly, “and the best. There never was a woman so good-hearted, and so thoroughly good.”
“She loves you.”
“Only for the sake of our country, Princess. Her patriotism takes the form of gratitude to me, who have been fortunate enough to be intimately connected with the salvation of her country before her eyes. I am not to her a mere man, but the saviour of England, and the Sicilies, from the wicked murderous French. Nelson the man is nothing to her. He is, as you see, a little one-eyed, one-armed being, obliged to brush his hair over his forehead to hide an untidy scar. If she thought of the man at all she would think of a big fine man like Captain Troubridge; and if she is a bit motherly to me, why, so she is to my mids, and it’s all because I’m such a poor little thing playing hide-and-seek with fever.”
“Yes; Miladi has the mother’s heart,” she said slowly, as if the words were extorted from her; “but the mother’s heart it is a woman’s heart, and what woman, not of the enemy, would not find her heart—graz-ee-us is it you say?”
“Certainly, gracious—that is what she is, a woman of women. There is no one like her—so generous, so enthusiastic, so truly noble.”
“She is very lov-ly; and how are other women to show that they have such hearts to the liberator of their country?”
“By attending to the comforts of my officers and sailors. We brought many badly wounded with us, who need the attention of women to give them back their full manhood.”
“Hélas! it is not possible. Our women have not such hearts; they could not give tenderness without also their love. But the English, they are not so. To us friendship between man and woman is like fire: we may warm the tips of our fingers at a—I do not know your word—scaldino, but we cannot have your English open fires, for we have not the chimneys.”
“Eccellenza!” called the Queen.