Florence: November 1854.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--You make me wait and I make you wait for
letters. It is bad of us both--and remember, _worse of you_, seeing that
you left two long letters of mine unanswered for months. I felt as if I
had fallen down an _oubliette_, and I was about to utter the loud
shrieks befitting the occasion, when you wrote at last. Don't treat me
so another time; I want to know your plans for the winter, since the
winter is upon us. Next summer, if it pleases God, we shall certainly
meet somewhere--say Paris, say London. We shall have money for it, which
we had not this year; and now the disappointment's over, I don't care.
The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his
roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six
months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and
fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini
and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love seem stronger
with me at Florence than elsewhere....

The war! The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the
justification. For the rest, one shuts one's eyes and ears--the rest is
too horrible. What do you mean by fearing that the war itself may not be
all the evil of the war? I expect, on the contrary, a freer political
atmosphere after this thunder. Louis Napoleon is behaving very tolerably
well, won't you admit, after all? And I don't look to a treason at the
end as certain of his enemies do, who are reduced to a 'wait, wait, and
you'll see.' There's a friend of mine here, a traditional anti-Gallican,
and very lively in his politics until the last few months. He can't
speak now or lift up his eyelids, and I am too magnanimous in opposition
to talk of anything else in his presence except Verdi's last opera,
which magnanimity he appreciates, though he has no ear. About a month
ago he came suddenly to life again. 'Have you heard the news? Napoleon
is suspected of making a secret treaty with Russia.' The next morning he
was as dead as ever--poor man! It's a desperate case for him.

Are you not happy--_you_--in this fast union between England and France?
Some of our English friends, coming to Italy through France, say that
the general feeling towards England, and the affectionate greetings and
sympathies lavished upon them as Englishmen by the French everywhere,
are quite strange and touching. 'In two or three years,' said a
Frenchman on a railroad, 'French and English, we shall make only one
nation.' Are you very curious about the subject of gossip just now
between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon? We hear from somebody in
Paris, whose _metier_ it is to know everything, that it refers to the
readjustment of affairs in Italy. May God grant it! The Italians have
been hanging their whole hope's weight upon Louis Napoleon ever since he
came to power, and if he does now what he can for them I shall be proud
of my _protege_--oh, and so glad! Robert and I clapped our hands
yesterday when we heard this; we couldn't refrain, though our informant
was reactionary and in a deep state of conservative melancholy. 'Awful
things were to be expected about Italy,' quotha!

Now do be good, and write and tell me what your plans are for the
winter. We shall remain here till May, and then, if God pleases, go
north--to Paris and London. Robert and I are at work on our books. I
have taken to ass's milk to counteract the tramontana, and he is in the
twenty-first and I in the twenty-second volume of Alexandre Dumas's
'Memoirs.' The book is _un peu hasarde_ occasionally, as might be
expected, but extremely interesting, and I really must recommend it to
your attention for the winter if you don't know it already.

We have seen a good deal of Mrs. Sartoris lately on her way to Rome
(Adelaide Kemble)--eloquent in talk and song, a most brilliant woman,
and noble. She must be saddened since then, poor thing, by her father's
death. Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau has seceded again
from her atheism? We heard so the other day. Dearest Mrs. Martin, do
write to me; and do, both of you, remember me, and think of both of us
kindly. With Robert's true regards,

I am your as ever affectionate
BA.

Tell me dear Mr. Martin's mind upon politics--in the Austrian and
Prussian question, for instance. We have no fears, in spite of Dr.
Cumming and the prophets generally, of ultimate results.