What you say of the meddling curiosity of people repels me, it is so different here. When I made my appearance with a husband and a child of a year old, nobody did the least act to annoy me. All were most cordial; none asked or implied questions. Yet there were not a few who might justly have complained, that, when they were confiding to me all their affairs, and doing much to serve me, I had observed absolute silence to them. Others might, for more than one reason, be displeased at the choice I made. All have acted in the kindliest and most refined manner. An Italian lady, with whom I was intimate,—who might be qualified in the Court Journal, as one of the highest rank, sustained by the most scrupulous decorum,—when I wrote, "Dear friend, I am married; I have a child. There are particulars, as to my reasons for keeping this secret, I do not wish to tell. This is rather an odd affair; will it make any difference in our relations?"—answered, "What difference can it make, except that I shall love you more, now that we can sympathize as mothers?" Her first visit here was to me: she adopted at once Ossoli and the child to her love.
—— wrote me that —— was a little hurt, at first, that I did not tell him, even in the trying days of Rome, but left him to hear it, as he unluckily did, at the table d'hôte in Venice; but his second and prevailing thought was regret that he had not known it, so as to soothe and aid me,—to visit Ossoli at his post,—to go to the child in the country. Wholly in that spirit was the fine letter he wrote me, one of my treasures. The little American society have been most cordial and attentive; one lady, who has been most intimate with me, dropped a tear over the difficulties before me, but she said, "Since you have seen fit to take the step, all your friends have to do, now, is to make it as easy for you as they can."
TO MRS. E.S.
I am glad to have people favorably impressed, because I feel lazy and weak, unequal to the trouble of friction, or the pain of conquest. Still, I feel a good deal of contempt for those so easily disconcerted or reässured. I was not a child; I had lived in the midst of that New England society, in a way that entitled me to esteem, and a favorable interpretation, where there was doubt about my motives or actions. I pity those who are inclined to think ill, when they might as well have inclined the other way. However, let them go; there are many in the world who stand the test, enough to keep us from shivering to death. I am, on the whole, fortunate in friends whom I can truly esteem, and in whom I know the kernel and substance of their being too well to be misled by seemings.
TO MRS. C.T.
I had a letter from my mother, last summer, speaking of the fact, that she had never been present at the marriage of one of her children. A pang of remorse came as I read it, and I thought, if Angelino dies,[A] I will not give her the pain of knowing that I have kept this secret from her;—she shall hear of this connection, as if it were something new. When I found he would live, I wrote to her and others. It half killed me to write those few letters, and yet, I know, many are wondering that I did not write more, and more particularly. My mother received my communication in the highest spirit. She said, she was sure a first object with me had been, now and always, to save her pain. She blessed us. She rejoiced that she should not die feeling there was no one left to love me with the devotion she thought I needed. She expressed no regret at our poverty, but offered her feeble means. Her letter was a noble crown to her life of disinterested, purifying love.
[Footnote A: This was when Margaret found Nino so ill at Rieti.]
FLORENCE.
The following notes respecting Margaret's residence in Florence were furnished to the editors by Mr. W.H. Hurlbut.
I passed about six weeks in the city of Florence, during the months of March and April, 1850. During the whole of that time Madame Ossoli was residing in a house at the corner of the Via della Misericordia and the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. This house is one of those large, well built modern houses that show strangely in the streets of the stately Tuscan city. But if her rooms were less characteristically Italian, they were the more comfortable, and, though small, had a quiet, home-like air. Her windows opened upon a fine view of the beautiful Piazza; for such was their position, that while the card-board façade of the church of Sta. Maria Novella could only be seen at an angle, the exquisite Campanile rose fair and full against the sky. She enjoyed this most graceful tower very much, and, I think, preferred it even to Giotto's noble work. Its quiet religious grace was grateful to her spirit, which seemed to be yearning for peace from the cares that had so vexed and heated the world about her for a year past.