ried her on the spot. He had not been
married three years when he was drowned in the Adriatic, no one ever
knew how. The young widow came back to Rome, to her father, and here
shortly afterwards, in the shadow of Saint Peter's, her little girl was
born. It might have been supposed that Mrs. Light would marry again,
and I know she had opportunities. But she overreached herself. She
would take nothing less than a title and a fortune, and they were not
forthcoming. She was admired and very fond of admiration; very vain,
very worldly, very silly. She remained a pretty widow, with a surprising
variety of bonnets and a dozen men always in her train. Giacosa dates
from this period. He calls himself a Roman, but I have an impression he
came up from Ancona with her. He was l'ami de la maison. He used to hold
her bouquets, clean her gloves (I was told), run her errands, get her
opera-boxes, and fight her battles with the shopkeepers. For this he
needed courage, for she was smothered in debt. She at last left Rome
to escape her creditors. Many of them must remember her still, but she
seems now to have money to satisfy them. She left her poor old father
here alone--helpless, infirm and unable to work. A subscription was
shortly afterwards taken up among the foreigners, and he was sent
back to America, where, as I afterwards heard, he died in some sort of
asylum. From time to time, for several years, I heard vaguely of Mrs.
Light as a wandering beauty at French and German watering-places. Once
came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage in England;
then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left
her to keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained
creature. She pretends to be a great lady, but I consider that
old Filomena, my washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one. But
certainly, after all, she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on
a lawsuit about some property, with her husband's family, and went to
America to attend to it. She came back triumphant, with a long purse.
She reappeared in Italy, and established herself for a while in Venice.
Then she came to Florence, where she spent a couple of years and where
I saw her. Last year she passed down to Naples, which I should have said
was just the place for her, and this winter she has laid siege to Rome.
She seems very prosperous. She has taken a floor in the Palazzo F----,
she keeps her carriage, and Christina and she, between t