What you say of the meddling curiosity of people repels me, it is so
different here. When I made my appearance with a husband and a child
of a year old, nobody did the least act to annoy me. All were most
cordial; none asked or implied questions. Yet there were not a few who
might justly have complained, that, when they were confiding to me
all their affairs, and doing much to serve me, I had observed absolute
silence to them. Others might, for more than one reason, be displeased
at the choice I made. All have acted in the kindliest and most refined
manner. An Italian lady, with whom I was intimate,--who might be
qualified in the Court Journal, as one of the highest rank, sustained
by the most scrupulous decorum,--when I wrote, "Dear friend, I am
married; I have a child. There are particulars, as to my reasons for
keeping this secret, I do not wish to tell. This is rather an odd
affair; will it make any difference in our relations?"--answered,
"What difference can it make, except that I shall love you more, now
that we can sympathize as mothers?" Her first visit here was to me:
she adopted at once Ossoli and the child to her love.
---- wrote me that ---- was a little hurt, at first, that I did not
tell him, even in the trying days of Rome, but left him to hear it, as
he unluckily did, at the _table d'hôte_ in Venice; but his second
and prevailing thought was regret that he had not known it, so as to
soothe and aid me,--to visit Ossoli at his post,--to go to the child
in the country. Wholly in that spirit was the fine letter he wrote
me, one of my treasures. The little American society have been most
cordial and attentive; one lady, who has been most intimate with me,
dropped a tear over the difficulties before me, but she said, "Since
you have seen fit to take the step, all your friends have to do, now,
is to make it as easy for you as they can."