My father died almost immediately after launching me on my medical career,--and my darling mother, two years later. In my unutterable loneliness, I lost all heart for my studies, and breaking away from ecole and hospitals, wandered in Italy, seeking to quench a quenchless grief. There I married an Italian girl, whose hair and eyes reminded me of my mother, but who expended on the dream of Italian unity such enthusiasm as my mother had lavished for the temporal power of the Pope. I think I was unconsciously attracted by this very difference. Valeria's opposition to the Pope was so serious and whole-souled, that it seemed to invest his cause with new dignity, and in argument with her I acquired increased respect for my own theories and for myself as capable of sustaining them. Moreover, at the very moment that our intellects were most at variance, we were each conscious of a subtle sympathy of nature; we were animated by the same feeling, though working in different directions. Her antagonism, therefore, never irritated me, but,--when the more profound union had once been established,--fascinated me by a peculiar charm, and led me, by a healthful transition, back to the ruder antagonisms of practical life. For, deprived of the support of my mother's lofty confidence, and in the weakness following excessive sorrow, I had begun to secretly despair of an ideal, which seemed buried in her all-devouring grave. At the same time I clung to it the more intensely, precisely because it seemed unattainable,--from a sort of morbid craving for whatever had become as unattainable as my mother's presence. I loathed action, even for the realization of my dreams, and over-concentrated thought threatened to degenerate into a sickly reverie that should presently exhaust the forces of my life, like an unnaturally prolonged sleep. New influence added in this direction might have driven me insane, while the diversion afforded by Valeria's counter-enthusiasm and the necessity of making an active defence of my own, roused me, and brought back the blood to the surface of my life. It was, therefore, partly an instinct of self-preservation which led me to Valeria,--and she saved me--my noble wife saved me for other destinies. We returned to Paris, where I resumed and completed my medical studies, and I had just graduated when the war broke out in Italy.