ss, exchanged a hasty and well-timed _sciao_, (_schiavo_,)
and gave up all genial intercourse. Far keener than the breath of
neighboring snow-capped Mount Cenis, the breath of despotism froze alike
tongues and souls. How could buttered toast, emblem of softness, thrive
in so hard a temperature? I left as soon as I could, and with a feeling
of relief akin to joy.

I was in no haste to revisit Turin, nor, had I been, would circumstances
have permitted my doing so. The fish had a tail for me as well as for
many others, and a very long tail too. Most of the years intervening
between 1831 and 1848 I had to spend abroad,--out of Italy, I mean. Time
enough for reflection. Plenty of worry and anxiety, and difficulties of
many a kind. Rough handling from the powers that were, cold indifference
from the masses. A flow of gentle sympathy, now and then, from a kindred
heart or two,--God bless them!--a live spring in a desert. A hard
apprenticeship,--still, useful in many ways, to develop the sense
of realities, to teach one to do without a host of things deemed
indispensable before to keep the soul in tune. I declare, for my part,
I don't regret those long years of erratic life. I bless them, on the
contrary; for they opened my eyes to the worth of my country. The right
point of view to take in physical or moral beauty, in its fulness, is
only at a distance.

The great convulsion of '48 flung wide the gates of Italy to the
wanderer, and I returned to Turin. I had left it at freezing-point,
and I found it at white-heat. Half Europe revolutionized,--France a
republic, Vienna in a blaze, Hungary in arms, Radetzky driven out of
Milan, a Piedmontese army in Lombardy,--there was more than enough to
turn the heads of the Seven Sages of Greece. No wonder ours were turned.
Serve a splendid banquet and pour out generous wine to a shipwrecked
crew who have long been starving, and ten to one they will overfeed
themselves and get drunk and quarrel. We did both, alas!--and those who
are drunk and quarrel are likely to be overpowered by those who keep
sober and united. We were divided about the sauce with which the hare
should be dressed, and, in the heat of argument, lost sight of this
little fact, that a hare, to be dressed at all, must first be caught.
The first reverses overtook us thus occupied. They did not sober us;
quite the contrary; we fell to doing what Manzoni's capons did.

By-the-by, since that revered name comes under my pen, I m