Ossoli, indeed, cannot but feel solitary at first, and I am much more
anxious about his happiness than my own. Still, he will have our boy,
and the love of my family, especially of my mother, to cheer him, and
quiet communings with nature give him pleasure so simple and profound,
that I hope he will make a new life for himself, in our unknown
country, till changes favor our return to his own. I trust, that we
shall find the means to come together, and to remain together."
Considerations of economy determined them, spite of many misgivings,
to take passage in a merchantman from Leghorn. "I am suffering," she
writes, "as never before, from the horrors of indecision. Happy
the fowls of the air, who do not have to think so much about their
arrangements! The barque _Elizabeth_ will take us, and is said to be
an uncommonly good vessel, nearly new, and well kept. We may be two
months at sea, but to go by way of France would more than double the
expense. Yet, now that I am on the point of deciding to come in her,
people daily dissuade me, saying that I have no conception of what
a voyage of sixty or seventy days will be in point of fatigue
and suffering; that the insecurity, compared with packet-ships or
steamers, is great; that the cabin, being on deck, will be terribly
exposed, in case of a gale, &c.
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