But you may think how worn out I have been in body and soul, and how under these circumstances we think little of Jerusalem or of any other place but our home at Florence. Still, we shall probably pass the winter either at Rome or Naples, but I know no more than a swaddled baby which. Also we shan't know, probably, till the end of November, when we take out our passports. Doubt is our element....
I must go to my Peni. I am almost happy about him now. And yet—oh, his lovely rosy cheeks, his round fat little shoulders, his strength and spring of a month ago!—at the best, we must lose our joy and pride in these for a time. May God bless you! I know you will feel for me, and that makes me so egotistical.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
To Miss Browning
[Florence: February 1858.]
My dearest Sarianna,—Robert is going to write to dear M. Milsand, whose goodness is 'passing that of men,' of all common friends certainly. Robert's thanks are worth more than mine, and so I shall leave it to Robert to thank him.
The 'grippe' has gripped us here most universally, and no wonder, considering our most exceptional weather; and better the grippe than the fever which preceded it. Such cold has not been known here for years, and it has extended throughout the south, it seems, to Rome and Naples, where people are snowed and frozen up. So strange. The Arno, for the first time since '47, has had a slice or two of ice on it. Robert has suffered from the prevailing malady, which did not however, through the precautions we took, touch his throat or chest, amounting only to a bad cold in the head. Peni was afflicted in the same way but in a much slighter degree, and both are now quite well. As for me I have caught no cold—only losing my breath and my soul in the usual way, the cough not being much. So that we have no claim, any of us, on your compassion, you see....
I think, I think Miss Blackwell has succeeded in frightening you a little. In the case of chaos, she will fly to England, I suppose; and even there she may fall on a refugee plot; for I have seen a letter of Mazzini's in which it was written that people stood on ruins in England, and that at any moment there might be a crash! Certainly, confusion in Paris would be followed by confusion in Italy and everywhere on the Continent at least, so I should never think of running away, let what might happen. In '52 and '53, when we were in Paris, there was more danger than could arise now, under a successful plot even; for, even if the Emperor fell, the people and the army seem prepared to stand by the dynasty. Also, public order has attained to some of the force of an habitual thing.