[Rome]: Saturday [April 1860].

My dearest dear Isa, not well! That must be the first word 'by return of
post.' Dear, let me have a better letter, to say that you are well and
bright again, and brilliant Isa as customary.

And now, join me in admiration of the 'husband Browning!' Isn't he a
miracle, whoever else may be? The wife Browning, not to name most other
human beings, would have certainly put the 'Monitore' receipt into the
fire, or, at best, lost it. In fact, whisper it not in the streets of
Askelon, but _she_ had forgotten even the fact of its having been sent,
and was quietly concluding that Wilson had lost it in a fog and that we
should have patiently to pay twice. Not at all. Up rises the husband
Browning, superior to his mate, and with eyes all fire, holds up the
receipt like an heroic rifleman looking to a French invasion at the end
of a hundred years. Blessed be they who keep receipts. It is a beatitude
beyond my reach.

Only I do hope my Tuscan friends of the 'Monitore' are only careless and
forgetful in their business habits, and that they didn't think of
'annexing'--eh, Isa! No, I don't believe it was dishonesty, it might
have so very well been oblivion.

May the paper come to-day, that's all. We get the 'Galignani,' but can't
afford to miss our Italian news. Then, not only we ourselves, but half a
dozen Tuscan exiles here in Rome who are not allowed to read a freely
breathed word, come to us for that paper, friends of Ferdinando's living
in Rome. First he lent them the paper, then they got frightened for fear
of being convicted through some spy of reading such a thing[81], and
prayed to come to this house to read it. There have been six of them
sometimes in the evening. We keep a sort of cafe in Rome, observe, and
your 'Monitore' is necessary to us.

You have seen by this time Lamoriciere's[82] address to the Papal array.
It's extraordinary, while the French are still here, that such a
publication should be permitted, obvious as the position taken must be
to all, and personally displeasing to the Emperor as the man is known to
be. Magnanimity is certainly a great feature of Napoleon's mind. And now
what next? The French are going, of course. You would suppose an attack
on Romagna imminent. And better so. Let us have it out at once.

I have the papers. I am much the better for some things in them. There's
to be the universal suffrage, the withdrawal of troops, whatever I
wanted. Cavour's despatch to the Swiss is also excellent. Those injured
martyrs wanted the bone in their teeth, that's all.

The wailing in England for Swiss and Savoyards, while other
nationalities are to be trodden under foot without intervention, except
what's called _aggression_, is highly irritating to me.

Dearest Isa, Robert tore me from my last sentence to you. I was going to
say that I cared less for the attacks of the press on my book than I
care for your sympathy. Thank you for feeling 'mad' for me. But be sane
again. Dear, it's not worth being mad for.

In the advertised 'Blackwood,' do you see an article called 'Poetic
Aberration'? It came into my head that it might be a stone thrown at me,
and Robert went to Monaldini's to glance at it. Sure enough it is a
stone. He says a violent attack. And let me do him justice. It was only
the misstatement in the 'Athenaeum' which overset him, only the first
fire which made him wink. Now he turns a hero's face to all this
cannonading. He doesn't care a straw, he says, and what's more, he
doesn't, really. So I, who was only sorry for him, can't care. Observe,
Isa, if there had been less violence and more generosity, the poems
would obviously have been less deserved.

The English were not always so thin-skinned. Lord Byron and Moore
have....

[_The rest of the letter is lost_]