gan to tell me a story of their stay in the mountains:
He had gone out to walk, and had unconsciously crossed the
Neapolitan frontier. Suddenly meeting with a party of the Neapolitan
_gendarmerie_, he was called to account for his trespass, and being
unable to produce any papers testifying to his loyalty, or
the legality of his existence, he was carried off, despite his
protestations, and lodged for the night in a miserable guard-house,
whence he-was taken, next morning, to the head-quarters of the officer
commanding in the neighborhood. Here, matters might have gone badly
with him, but for the accident that he had upon his person a business
letter directed to himself as the Marchese Ossoli. A certain abbe, the
regimental chaplain, having once spent some time in Rome, recognized
the name as that of an officer in the Pope's Guardia Nobile,[C]
whereupon, the Neapolitan officers not only ordered him to be
released, but sent him back, with many apologies, in a carriage, and
under an armed escort, to the Roman territory. When he reached this
part of his story, and came to his meeting with Madame Ossoli,
the remembrance of her terrible distress during the period of his
detention so overcame him, that he was quite unable to go on.

Towards their child he manifested an overflowing tenderness, and most
affectionate care.

Notwithstanding the intense contempt and hatred which Signore Ossoli,
in common with all the Italian liberals, cherished towards the
ecclesiastical body, he seemed to be a very devout Catholic. He used
to attend regularly the vesper service, in some of the older and
quieter churches of Florence; and, though I presume Madame Ossoli
never accepted in any degree the Roman Catholic forms of faith, she
frequently accompanied him on these occasions. And I know that she
enjoyed the devotional influences of the church ritual, as performed
in the cathedral, and at Santa Croce, especially during the
Easter-week.

Though condemned by her somewhat uncertain position at Florence,[D]
as well as by the state of things in Tuscany at that time, to a
comparative inaction, Madame Ossoli never seemed to lose in the least
the warmth of her interest in the affairs of Italy, nor did she bate
one jot of heart or hope for the future of that country. She was much
depressed, however, I think, by the apparent apathy and prostration
of the Liberals in Tuscany; and the presence of the Austrian troops in
Florence was as painful and annoy