"In Bologna--you see I hasten on--as we were walking about, we happened to pass the town hall. There two marble tablets hang, inscribed with the names of those who fell in the fight for the liberation of the city. I felt a thrill pass through Giuseppe's arm; and to this circumstance I owe a conversation which laid, deeper than ever, the foundations of our union. "You know, dearest mother, how my eyes were opened to the wrong I did Giuseppe by my odious, egotistical caprices; they almost cost him his life and both of us our happiness. You know how my soul is constantly vexed by that state of public feeling which breeds in us resentment, hatred, unreasonable fanaticism, and a disgraceful intolerance. An unnatural, unhealthy state of opinion like this does more harm to society than the most disastrous war, for it is impossible to estimate how much it destroys of spiritual power and efficiency, how many hearts it leaves empty, how many families it lays waste. Believe me, mother, that any nation which has achieved an unrighteous conquest, and annexed what belongs to others, makes all its citizens participators in its wrong-doing. Not only does it relax the moral fibre of every individual and add to the mischiefs done by private chicanery, violence, and robbery, and the harsh tyranny of officialism, but it robs the heart of its due rights in the family and society. "Some silly verses were once written about me by an enamoured fool; not a word of truth was there in them. But now, my beloved mother, I feel that, if I had never met Giuseppe, what was said in those verses would have come to be true enough some time, for heartless and vain as I then was, heartless and vain I should have remained to the end! And why? Because the unhappy condition of public affairs had sown poison in my whole nature. "And my confessions were met by Giuseppe's. His defiant, egotistical will had so mastered him that the most casual interference with his desires might have cost him his life, the merest accident have changed its whole course. But that same defiant will--in what atmosphere had it been fostered? "We gave one another the fullest confidence that evening in Bologna, and then for the first time all doubts vanished and the future seemed absolutely secure.