to a legitimist. He now made a second voyage to Italy,
following the inclinations of his dreamy nature. During his stay there,
he composed the first volume of his _Meditations_, which afterward won
him so much fame.

He was on the borders of the gulf of Naples, when he heard of the
establishment of the Bourbon dynasty, and he hastened home and solicited
a place in the army, to the great joy of his father. During the Hundred
Days he threw aside the sword, and would not take it again when Louis
XVIII. regained the throne.

Lamartine now loved a young woman devotedly, but she died, to his
excessive grief. He was severely ill from this cause, and it wrought a
great change in his character. When recovered from his illness, he
destroyed his profane poetry, and kept only that which bore the impress
of faith and religion. He published his first volume of _Meditations_
in 1820. He sought in vain two years for a publisher, until at last a
man by the name of Nicoll, as a personal favor, issued the volume. It
made his fortune. France welcomed the new poet as a redeemer, who had
dispelled the materialism of Voltaire. He became an _attache_ of the
ambassador in Tuscany, and there met a young English woman, who was in
love with him before she saw him, from reading his _Meditations_. This
woman he shortly married. She brought him beauty, goodness, and a large
fortune.

In 1823 the second volume of _Meditations_ appeared, and had the same
success as the first. An uncle died at this time, leaving him a fortune,
and he was now independent of the world. He lived alternately in London
and in Paris, occasionally accepting the post of secretary to a foreign
ambassador, and finally becoming charge d'affaires at an Italian court.
Like almost all the distinguished authors of France, Lamartine fought
his duel. He had written something disparaging to modern Italy, and one
Colonel Pepe, an Italian, challenged him to fight a duel. He accepted
the challenge and was wounded. For six months he hung between life and
death. All Florence condemned with severity the brutal colonel, who had
taken offense at one of the poet's verses, and they came to inquire for
his health every hour of the day, as if he had been a monarch. When he
left Florence, great was their sorrow. In the midst of his diplomatic
labors he continued to write poetry, and on his return to Paris in the
month of May, 1829, he published "_Harmonies Poetiques et
Reliegieuses_," and this bo