Say, that as soon as I can find
means of conveyance, without an expense too enormous, I shall go again
into the mountains. There I shall find pure, bracing air, and I hope
stillness, for a time. Say, she need feel no anxiety, if she do not
hear from me for some time. I may feel indisposed to write, as I do
now; my heart is too full.
Private hopes of mine are fallen with the hopes of Italy. I have
played for a new stake, and lost it. Life looks too difficult. But
for the present I shall try to wave all thought of self and renew my
strength.
After the attempt at revolution in France failed, could I have
influenced Mazzini, I should have prayed him to capitulate, and yet I
feel that no honorable terms can be made with such a foe, and that the
only way is _never_ to yield; but the sound of the musketry, the sense
that men were perishing in a hopeless contest, had become too terrible
for my nerves. I did not see Mazzini, the last two weeks of the
republic. When the French entered, he walked about the streets, to
see how the people bore themselves, and then went to the house of
a friend. In the upper chamber of a poor house, with his life-long
friends,--the Modenas,--I found him.
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