She was in the habit of taking such walks with her
husband, and she never returned from one of them, I believe, without
some new impression of beauty and of lasting truth. While her
judgment, intense in its sincerity, tested, like an _aqua regia_, the
value of all facts that came within her notice, her sympathies
seemed, by an instinctive and unerring action, to transmute all her
experiences instantly into permanent treasures.
The economy of the house in which she lived afforded me occasions
for observing the decisive power, both of control and of consolation,
which she could exert over others. Her maid,--an impetuous girl of
Rieti, a town which rivals Tivoli as a hot-bed of homicide,--was
constantly involved in disputes with a young Jewess, who occupied the
floor above Madame Ossoli. On one occasion, this Jewess offered the
maid a deliberate and unprovoked insult. The girl of Rieti, snatching
up a knife, ran up stairs to revenge herself after her national
fashion. The porter's little daughter followed her and, running
into Madame Ossoli's rooms, besought her interference. Madame Ossoli
reached the apartment of the Jewess, just in time to interpose between
that beetle-browed lady and her infuriated assailant.
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