aving 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 t