Villa Alberti, Siena: Wednesday [July-August 1859].

My ever dearest, kindest Isa,--I can't let another day go without
writing just a word to you to say that I am alive enough to love you. In
fact, dear, I am a great deal better; no longer ground to dust with
cough; able to sleep at nights; and preparing to-day to venture on a
little minced chicken, which I have resisted all the advances of
hitherto. This proves my own opinion of myself, at least. I am extremely
weak, reeling when I ought to walk, and glad of an arm to steer by. But
the attack is over; the blister to the side, tell Dr. Gresonowsky,
conquered the uneasiness there, and did me general good, I think. Now I
have only to keep still and quiet, and do nothing useful, or the
contrary, if possible, and not speak, and not vex myself more than is
necessary on politics. I had a letter from Jessie Mario, dated Bologna,
the other day, and feel a little uneasy at what she may be about there.
It was a letter not written in very good taste, blowing the trumpet
against all Napoleonists. Most absurd for the rest. Cavour had promised
L.N. Tuscany for his cousin as the price of his intervention in Italy;
and Prince Napoleon, finding on his arrival here that it 'wouldn't do,'
the peace was made in a huff.

Absurd, certainly.

Robert advises me not to answer, and it may be as well, perhaps.

I dreamed lately that I followed a mystic woman down a long suite of
palatial rooms. She was in white, with a white mask, on her head the
likeness of a crown. I knew she was Italy, but I couldn't see through
the mask. All through my illness political dreams have repeated
themselves, in inscrutable articles of peace and eternal provisional
governments. Walking on the mountains of the moon, hand in hand with a
Dream more beautiful than them all, then falling suddenly on the hard
earth-ground on one's head, no wonder that one should suffer. Oh, Isa,
the tears are even now in my eyes to think of it!

And yet I have hope, and the more I consider, the more I hope.

There will be no intervention to interfere with us in Tuscany, and there
is something _better behind_, which we none of us see yet.

We read to-day of the Florence elections. May God bless my Florence!

Dearest Isa, don't you fancy that you will get off with a day and night
here. No, indeed. Also, I would rather you waited till I could talk, and
go out, and enjoy you properly; and just now I am a mere rag of a Ba
hung on a chair to be out of the way.

Robert is so very kind as to hear Pen's lessons, which keeps me easy
about the child.

Heat we have had and have; but there's a great quantity of air--such
blowings as you boast of at your villa--and I like this good open air
and the quiet. I have seen nobody yet....

Dearest Isa, I miss you, and love you. How perfect you are to me always.

Robert's true love, with Pen's. And I may send my love to Miss Field,
may I not?

Yours, in tender affection,
BA.

Do write, and tell me everything.

Yes, England will do a little dabbling about constitutions and the like
where there's nothing to lose or risk; and why does Mrs. Trollope say
'God bless them' for it? _I_ never will forgive England the most
damnable part she has taken on Italian affairs, never. The pitiful cry
of 'invasion' is the continuation of that hound's cry, observe. Must we
live and bear?