s. I did
not refuse your heart this luxury; for I have a child--Ah! I have taught
that child already to revere your name, and in her prayers it is
not forgotten. But now that you are convinced that even your zeal is
unavailing, I ask you to discontinue attempts which may but bring the
spy upon my track, and involve me in new misfortunes. Believe me, O
brilliant Englishman, that I am satisfied and contented with my lot.
I am sure it would not be for my happiness to change it, 'Chi non ha
provato il male non conosce il bone.'

["One does not know when one is well off till one has known
misfortune."]

You ask me how I live,--I answer, alla giornata,--[To the day]--not
for the morrow, as I did once. I have accustomed myself to the calm
existence of a village. I take interest in its details. There is my
wife, good creature, sitting opposite to me, never asking what I write,
or to whom, but ready to throw aside her work and talk the moment the
pen is out of my hand. Talk--and what about? Heaven knows! But I would
rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble
again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths
and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence
the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavelli and Thucydides? Then,
by and by, the parson will drop in, and we argue. He never knows when he
is beaten, so the argument is everlasting. On fine days I ramble out by
a winding rill with my Violante, or stroll to my friend the squire's,
and see how healthful a thing is true pleasure; and on wet days I shut
myself up, and mope, perhaps till, hark! a gentle tap at the door,
and in comes Violante, with her dark eyes, that shine out through
reproachful tears,--reproachful that I should mourn alone, while she is
under my roof; so she puts her arms round me, and in five minutes all is
sunshine within. What care we for your English gray clouds without?

Leave me, my dear Lord,--leave me to this quiet happy passage towards
old age, serener than the youth that I wasted so wildly; and guard well
the secret on which my happiness depends.

Now to yourself, before I close. Of that same yourself you speak
too little, as of me too much. But I so well comprehend the profound
melancholy that lies underneath the wild and fanciful humour with which
you but suggest, as in sport, what you feel so in earnest. The laborious
solitude of cities weighs on you. You are flying