submission, her eternal salvation was imperilled.

Signora Candia, when she went to reside in Turin, had had to choose a confessor there; and her choice had luckily fallen upon a very worthy old ecclesiastic. She carried her anguish of mind to his feet, and appealed to his judgment against Don Pio's harsh sentence. The old priest's views of her duty under the circumstances proved far less absolute and much more humane than those of the younger man. To get out of harm's way, so as neither to receive nor countenance any scandal, to do this and pray, continually pray for her husband and the afflicted Church, such and no other were the directions she received. Then it was that, greatly relieved in her mind, yet with still an aching heart, she penned the following letter to her husband :

"MY DEAR VINCENZO,-Nothing is amiss; my health is excellent, and so, thank God, is that of our darling. I begin with this cheering intelligence, my dear husband, at once to dispel the uneasiness about us, which you will certainly feel on receiving a letter instead of seeing baby and me, as you expected. Since it is my fate to give you pain, let me, at least, give none that is unnecessary. Yes, my dear Vincenzo, I must give you some pain; it cannot be avoided; and yet God, who reads my heart, God is my witness that I would willingly give up my life to make you happy. But there are interests far more precious than life, and such as I cannot sacrifice even for you. There are but what is the use of all this preamble but to make you fancy something still worse than what I have to say? What I have to say is, that I cannot return to Turin for the present; nor, indeed, for some time. I never thought it could be so hard to write these simple words. My hand is all in a shake with the effort!...

"Now for the reason which compels me to take this course. I might have hid it from you-I might have easily accounted for our remaining in the No. 49.-VOL. IX.

country by the fatigue of nursing, or the cutting of baby's teeth-two are just coming, poor little darling—or the fine season at hand; but I will not, I cannot be insincere. I will not, I cannot repay your confidence in me with duplicity. No, I want you to read in my heart as in an open book. Well, then, my reason for not coming back to you for the present is-I scarcely know how to go on. You will do me the justice, my dear Vincenzo, to allow that I have tried, with all my heart, lately to conform to your ideas and meet your wishes. I have taught myself to believe what you believe, to like what you like, and I have so far succeeded in the attempt as to make you contented with me. I have approved of the war, I have willingly acquiesced in your taking office, I have been happy and proud of your success, and my heartiest wishes have been, and are still at this moment, for the greatness and the prosperity of our country. I have followed you thus far. Oh, Vincenzo, why should there be any point to which I cannot follow you? You guess to what I allude-to one of the results of the last campaign, for which I was quite unprepared-I mean this deplorable annexation to Piedmont of part of the Pontifical States.

"Still, even such an act I might have borne in silence but for the solemn condemnation passed upon it by His Holiness, which makes silence itself a sin. Yes, to keep silent is, to a certain extent, to countenance; and to countenance what the Holy Father has condemned is mortal sin. You must see, therefore, that, if I were now to return to you, my position would be a most trying one; indeed, it would be downright wretchedness. Almost all your friends

the Del Palmettos, Signor Onofrio, &c. and you yourself being in favour of the annexation, I should have no choice but either to remain silent, and thus load my conscience by an appearance of acquiescence, or to protest at every moment, and thus grow a bore to every one, and, worse than all, become displeasing to you.

D

"I know what you will say to thisyou will say, 'Come, and you shall have no such alternative to apprehend. I shall take good care that the thorny question be not even so much as alluded to in your presence.' Yes, but at what cost? At the cost of all your intimacies, of all freedom of communication in your own home? I should hate and despise myself if I could only for a moment harbour the thought of weaning you from your friends, or of burdening them and you with the incubus of a perpetual reticence. No, my dear Vincenzo, there is but one rational way of meeting the difficulty-a temporary separation.

"And now let me beseech you, my dearest husband, not to attempt to combat my resolution, nor to weaken the grounds on which I have taken it. I know you have plenty of cogent reasons to urge, plenty of respectable authorities to quote, against the view I take of this question. I know you have a distinction ready between the Pope, Head of the Church, and the Pope, secular sovereign-between the spiritual and temporal power. All

this I have heard over and over again, and without being in the least shaken in my convictions. I suppose (I say so in real humility) that I am far too ignorant to feel the full force of certain arguments. It is a thousand pities that such a clever, learned man as you are should have cast in his lot with a woman who has such a narrow understanding as I am aware I have. But you will give me credit for this, at all events, that I never tried to conceal from you any of my shortcomings. What I am now at twenty-five I was and showed myself when a girl of fourteen.

"Well, then, to me the Holy Father has always been and always will be the representative of Jesus Christ upon earth, and what the Holy Father orders I deem as binding on me as if the Almighty Himself had ordered it. I was brought up in this creed, it forms part of myself; I cannot alter it, nor would I if I could. You see, then,

that no good could come of your remonstrances, and evil might. Even-to anticipate all possible cases—even if the charm of your voice should be able to banish for a time what you consider my scruples, I know myself well enough to be sure that deep-rooted habits of thinking and life-long associations would. speedily reassert their power, and that the struggle within me would begin afresh, fiercer than ever, and make me thoroughly miserable. Now, you don't wish to make your Rose miserable, do you? I rely, therefore, on your generously acceding to my prayer not to oppose, though only by arguments, the course I have decided on.

"Even in my sorrow I must consider myself fortunate that I have no sadder message to send, no crueller duty to accomplish, than such as my strength is equal to. What if, as for an instant I had cause to fear, what if I had had to break off all intercourse with you, unless... It makes me shudder only to think what might have been, and I thank God humbly and fervently that I have been spared the trial. Yes, my dear Vincenzo, that liberty of acting up to the dictates of my conscience, which I claim for myself, I am happily empowered to leave entire to you. I have no change in the actual tenor of your life to exact, to entreat, or (I am, perhaps, going too far, but God, who sees my motives, will pardon me if I do) to wish for. I have acquired the conviction that regular work of a certain kind is absolutely necessary for your wellbeing. Go on, then, with your present task; continue to be a useful servant to your country, and a credit to yourself and those who love you. I should not have said this, but that I know how generously self-forgetting you are, and I am anxious to put you on your guard against yourself.

"And now good-bye, my dear, my kind Vincenzo. I need not beg you to write as often, to come and see us as often, as you can. I know you will do both without being urged. As for me, I shall write and give you a daily account of both your Roses. Now, I

...

have only to ask your forgiveness for the pain I give you. I am so sorry for it so very sorry-but it can't be helped. After all, it is only a temporary separation, you know. Matters cannot go on long thus between the King and His Holiness-some right settlement must be made and at no distant period at least, I hope so; don't you? Adieu! What a pity that it should have come to this! We were so happy together-but I must not murmur. God bless you, my dearest husband, and believe me always

"Your affectionate wife,

"ROSE. "P.S.-Little Rose has kissed the paper here at this round mark, and so have I. Once again, adieu!"

Vincenzo was as little prepared for this ominous intelligence as the mariner who has moored his vessel over-night in a quiet haven is prepared for awakening on the high seas in the midst of a terrific storm. Not the remotest idea had even as much as glanced across his mind for the last ten months, that the old half-forgotten spectre, which had for so long haunted his married life, might again rise and place itself between him and his wife. And now, here it was, more threatening than ever! Vincenzo was utterly overcome. He laid his head on the desk before him, clasped his temples with both hands, and strove to collect his thoughts.

Presently he took up the letter to re-read it. Some passages, scarcely noticed on the first perusal, on the second touched him deeply; traces on the paper of tears, overlooked before, now anxiously sought for and verified, went straight to his heart. With the gush of sensibility broke forth a qualm of alarm. God alone could know, thought Vincenzo, at the cost of what intense agony she had kept up that show of composure, intended to spare his feelings. But he was not to be duped by her generosity, not he; he felt the moral certainty that she was frantic with grief, fairly heart-broken, probably ill... We know of old how

apt was Vincenzo's imagination, in general far from easily excited, to run riot on any subject connected with Rose and her father.

He drove at once to the railway, and within half an hour was on his road to Rumelli-not to combat his wife's resolution, not to argue or expostulate with her, but to soothe and comfort her. Against Rose, exacting, imperious, defiant, he had found it in his heart to struggle; before Rose, tender, submissive, unhappy, he felt completely disarmed. Indeed, if indispensable to her peace, he would lay, as a sacrifice at her feet, all his plans of usefulness, his prospects of worldly advancement—yes, for her peace, he would not shrink even from that. . . . But Cavour? How aecount to Cavour for his defection? And yet account for it he must, or what would his kind employer think of him? The locomotive at the head of the train did not work harder than did Vincenzo's poor brain, once set on this track. He reached the Palace in a state of feverish agitation.

Rose was not taken unawares; she had contemplated the possibility-nay, the probability-of his coming, and had prepared herself accordingly. We have seen by her letter that what Rose most apprehended, and most wished to avert, was that, in a fit of generosity, Vincenzo should resign his appointment; now plain good sense told her that, the more calm and cheerful she appeared to him, the less chance there would be of his taking that extreme step. It was not, however, without a sharp battle with her feelings that she managed to keep her reception of her husband within the bounds of that affectionate cordiality to which she had accustomed him of late days. She said that she had expected him, and how very glad she was he had come, that they might talk over this momentary difficulty; for, after all, there was nothing like a quiet talk for settling things in their true light. Letters never answered in such cases; they always said too little or too much. Hers, she feared, had alarmed him; had it not?

Rose's assumed equanimity had the desired effect. To see her look, to hear her talk in that easy natural way, to receive comfort and encouragement from her, instead of having to comfort and encourage-in one word, to find her altogether so different from what he had pictured to himself-gave Vincenzo a revulsion of feeling which instantly sobered him. Suddenly divested of the phantasmagoria in which he had clothed it, the naked reality, as it stood before him, lost by contrast even somewhat of its natural proportions.

Rose had therefore no difficulty in getting him to adopt her views-the views enforced in her letter. Safeguarding the present as they did, they did, without prejudging the future, they were, in fact, the only rational ones under the circumstances; and Vincenzo, once reassured about his wife, once satisfied that the short trial at hand was not above her power of endurance, could not but acknowledge their soundness. In short, Signora Candia had the consolation of sending her husband back to his occupations next day, sad— how could he be otherwise ?-but tolerably composed in mind, and heartily thankful for being spared the struggle between his duty to her and that to his venerated patron.

Much as the solitude of his home in Turin weighed at first on Vincenzo, he fought against despondence bravely; and, to help him to do so with less effort, presently came the excitement of that rush of wonderful events, which opened with the landing of Garibaldi at Marsala, and closed with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy. The work of the sword did not exclude the work of the pen, and that of Vincenzo had no rest either by day or by night. Still, whatever the business in hand, however important or pressing it might be, there would peep from the paper before him the image of his wife and child, sitting lonely and disconsolate far away, and a sigh would come.

The sight of his dear ones, whom he never failed to visit on Sundays, generally had the effect of sending him back to

town in low spirits. These were, however, necessarily fugitive impressions. Vincenzo was too much in the current of exciting events, far too much occupied, to indulge long in melancholy musings.

But when, in the lull of success, both the excitement and the press of business slackened, and the compressed sensibilities found leisure for asserting their own; when Vincenzo measured the length of time since Rose's departure, and looked for the chances of her possible return, and saw them, along with the chances of a settlement with Rome, daily recede and fade away into an indefinite future; then Vincenzo's heart sickened with hope deferred, and he was beset by many misgivings. What came of them, Vincenzo will himself tell in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

STRANDED.

"TO SIGNOR ONOFRIO AT NAPLES.

Rumelli, June, 1861.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,-I have sent in my resignation; it has been accepted with some difficulty; and here I am again at my starting point. Like an ill-fated ship, over and over again driven back by contrary winds, I return disabled to my moorings, there to lie and rot. It was my destiny that it should be so, and it is so far accomplished. . . . But I have not taken up the pen to complain. Even had I the inclination, the moment would be ill chosen to do so. The insignificant insect shorn of its wings in a cobweb has no right to be querulous, when the king of the forest lies struck down in all his might. All individual woes lose their claim even to utterance in the face of the immense calamity which weighs down a whole nation-the death of Cavour. Prepared for it, as we were for the last four-and-twenty hours, we could not believe it-it could not be realized. But yesterday we had heard his voice in parliament; but yesterday we had felt

the impress of his large mind on the course of European events; and that today there should be nothing left of him! It seemed incongruous, unnatural, impossible, that, so long as his work was not done, the great workman should be missing. Alas! it is even so. Providence has such thunderbolts among its ways. Was the task of Italian redemption too easy with such a man? And was he taken from us that we might grope in the dark, and stumble, and earn, through further suffering, the entrance into the promised land? This is the secret of the Almighty-it only remains for us to bow our heads.

"Happy you, my dear friend, who were spared at least the anguish of the scenes which it was my sad privilege to witness. Yet why so? There are sights which, however heartrending, still no man who loves his kind would miss, so strongly do they witness in favour of human nature; and the universal homage of filial respect and tenderness paid to Count Cavour, during the few days of his illness, is too honourable to him who received, and to the population who gave it, not to form one of the saddest and yet one of the proudest recollections associated with his name and with the noble city wherein he was born and died. No one who has not seen the thick rows of anxious faces thronging for days together the halls, the stairs, the courtyard of the Hotel Cavour, and the street of the Arcivescovado no one whose heart has not throbbed in poignant communion with the hearts of the thousands hanging upon a word-can ever realize what he was to us. And when the fatal word fell upon the multitude; when . . . but I must stop here. I was there; I saw it all, I felt it all, and still I am powerless to convey any, the faintest, idea of that overwhelming moment. All I can say is, that if peoples are ungrateful-as the common saying isthe people of Turin, for one, was not so. A family mourning over a beloved father, such, literally, was Turin on this lamentable occasion.

...

"You are not to believe, my dear friend,

that I have thrown up my appointment in a fit of discouragement consequent upon the sad event. No such thing. My nature, had it been left to itself, would have prompted me rather to the contrary course. It is not when the general falls that the soldiers are to leave their ranks. Unfortunately, I was not free to act according to my natural inclination. The fact is, that I had predetermined for some time to seize upon the first opportunity for leaving office; the death of Count Cavour afforded this opportunity, and I seized upon it. The forming of this resolution was not the work of a day; it had been forcing itself upon me inch by inch, as it were, for the last six months; and the moment I acquired the conviction that this unlucky Roman question, far from narrowing to a solution, grew daily more entangled and envenomed, and was likely to linger on for years-from that moment, I say, my resolution became irrevocable. Not without a struggle, as you may well believe. I clung to my employment with the energy of despair. . . but in all struggles between the interests of my wife and mine I am destined to be the loser. It has been the blessing and the . . . stumbling-block of all my life, that I should receive so much from that family as to make all return on my part still inadequate to the benefit. I have a kind of superstition on this score.

Well, then, it was the old story over again an everlasting contention of mind. You recollect my flight to Turin in 1857, and the miserable failure in which it ended; and yet I had to support me, at that time, the sense of provocation and of the harshness I had been writhing under-while now the case was quite different, I met with nothing but affection and submission. How could I find it in my heart to resist? We could see but little of each other, scarcely once a week. Much as I felt this deprivation, Rose felt it far more. With a man situated as I was, that is, busy from morning to evening, and, when not actually at work, constantly preoccupied about it, time flies quick