_Rieti, July_ 11, 1848.--Once I had resolution to face my difficulties
myself, and try to give only what was pleasant to others; but now that
my courage has fairly given way, and the fatigue of life is beyond my
strength, I do not prize myself, or expect others to prize me.
Some years ago, I thought you very unjust, because you did not lend
full faith to my spiritual experiences; but I see you were quite
right. I thought I had tasted of the true elixir, and that the want
of daily bread, or the pangs of imprisonment, would never make me a
complaining beggar. A widow, I expected still to have the cruse full
for others. Those were glorious hours, and angels certainly visited
me; but there must have been too much earth,--too much taint of
weakness and folly, so that baptism did not suffice. I know now those
same things, but at present they are words, not living spells.
I hear, at this moment, the clock of the Church del Purgatorio
telling noon in this mountain solitude. Snow yet lingers on these
mountain-tops, after forty days of hottest sunshine, last night broken
by a few clouds, prefatory to a thunder storm this morning. It has
been so hot here, that even the peasant in the field says, "_Non porro
píù resistere_," and slumbers in the shade, rather than the sun. I
love to see their patriarchal ways of guarding the sheep and tilling
the fields. They are a simple race. Remote from the corruptions of
foreign travel, they do not ask for money, but smile upon and bless me
as I pass,--for the Italians love me; they say I am so "_simpatica._"
I never see any English or Americans, and now think wholly in Italian:
only the surgeon who bled me, the other day, was proud to speak a
little French, which he had learned at Tunis! The ignorance of this
people is amusing. I am to them a divine visitant,--an instructive
Ceres,--telling them wonderful tales of foreign customs, and even
legends of the lives of their own saints. They are people whom I could
love and live with. Bread and grapes among them would suffice me.