“My dear, dear Sir,
“How shall I begin! What shall I say to you. ’Tis impossible I can write for I have a fevour caused by agitation and pleasure. God, what a victory! Never, has there been anything half so glorious, so compleat. I fainted when I heard the joyfull news and fell on my side and am hurt. I should feil it a glory to die in such a cause. No, I would not like to die until I see and embrace the Victor of the Nile. How shall I describe to you the transports of Maria Carolina. She fainted and kissed her husband, her children, walked about the room, cried, kissed, embraced every person near her, exclaiming, ‘Oh, brave Nelson. Oh, God bless and protect our brave deliverer. Oh, Nelson, Nelson, what do we not owe to you. Oh that my swolen heart coud now tell him personally what we owe to him.’ You may judge, my dear sir, of the rest. The Neapolitans are mad with joy, and if you was here now you woud be killed with kindness. Not a French dog dare show his face. How I glory in the honner of my country and my countryman. I walk and tread in air with pride, feeling I was born in the same land with Nelson and his gallant band. Little dear Captain Hoste will tell you the rest. He dines with us in the day for he will not sleep out of his ship. He is a fine good lad. If he is only half a Nelson he will be superior to all others. I send you two letters from my adorable Queen. We are preparing your apartment against you come. I wish you coud have seen our house the three nights of illumination. ’Tis, ’twas covered with your glorious name. Their were 3 thousand lamps and their shoud have been 3 millions if we had had time. For God’s sake come to Naples soon. I woud have been rather an English powder-monkey or a swab in that great victory than an Emperor out of it.
“The Queen as this moment sent a Dymond ring to Captain Hoste, six buts of wine and every man on board a guinea each.
“My dress from head to foot is alla Nelson. Ask Hoste. Even my earrings are Nelson’s anchors; in short, we are be-Nelsoned all over. I send you some sonets, but must have taken a ship on purpose to send you all written on you. My mother desires her love to you.”
Nelson read that letter; his heart throbbing as he read. Who can understand as she could—none, none, in all the wide world, for she was a part of it. Dear Fanny! She will write fondly, and with a natural pride, but this one—Emma!—why a man may see her heart is almost bursting for triumphant tumultuous joy. She alone feels as he does. Their hearts beat together. The beautiful exultant creature! Yes, Fanny will write, but it will not be like this. Oh, to see her, to hear her voice repeating his own transports. Every word of Hoste’s feeds his flame of gratitude.
“By God, sir, she’s the loveliest, most wonderful woman in all the world! She so touched off your doings that I declare I realized them afresh in her words. Capel can talk of nothing else. She dazzled him.”
Indeed, Nelson himself was dazzled. He had never drunk so sparkling, so maddening a draught, with all his triumphs. Europe poured her gratitude at his feet. Her saviour! A peerage from his own England, with a pension of £2000 a year and a gift of £10,000 from the Great East India Company whose dominions and commerce he saved, an autograph letter and diamonds from the Czar, a diamond feather from the Grand Turk with a sable pelisse also from “that good Turban soul,” as Emma called him—but why enumerate all the gifts and glories, indeed beyond enumeration? There was one he coveted more than any—the look in those eyes that saw into his own soul with perfect sympathy; the sound of that voice which for him bore the sweetness of fame, the thrill of glory.
On the 22nd September he came to Naples in his battered Vanguard and no warning breathed from blue air and bluer seas. All was gladness.
Yet there a greater danger than any from any enemy awaited him. His own heart. And hers.