Four happy, healthful years had completely restored my mental equilibrium. I was no longer an extravagant fanatic, prepared for a cloister or a crusade, but still a tolerably ardent ultra-montanist, pivoted upon the theory of the temporal power of the Pope. Valeria's influence, in modifying the superficial exuberance of my enthusiasm, had only rendered its energy more practical, more eager for an opportunity to incarnate its ideal in vigorous facts. Now the opportunity had arrived, and the enthusiasm blazed forth afresh; all interests, all consciousness of other ties were absorbed in devotion to the Church of which I felt myself a not unimportant member. My fortune, my time, my life, were all too little to place at its disposal, and I hastened to enrol myself on the medical staff of a regiment of Papal Zouaves. Valeria, who had always reasoned against my theories, was too consistent herself to oppose me in putting them into practice, but she insisted on accompanying me to Italy. We parted at Civita Vecchia, I to go to Rome, she, with our two children, to Naples, where her family had formerly resided. She wrote to me every day, but after several weeks came a blank of three days without a letter. At the same moment arrived the news that the cholera was raging at Naples--news which rendered most ominous this sudden interruption of the correspondence. I obtained leave of absence and hurried south, to learn that my wife and babies were dead--fallen among the very first victims of the pestilence. Stunned and heart-sick, I returned to Rome, anxious to devote myself to the cause with the more desperate earnestness that it was the only living interest left to me in the world. I arrived just before the battle of Montana, and regretted that fortune had not assigned me a role among the soldiers of the cross, among those who might embrace a welcome death, in exchange for the glory of serving the Church. Resolved to approach this honor as nearly as possible, I contrived to obtain an appointment in the ambulance corps, and accompanied the troops to the field. I have no distinct recollection of that day,--the third after Valeria's funeral,--and which, as my first experience of a battle, assumed to me the magnificent proportions of an Austerlitz or Waterloo. I only know that, intoxicated by the novel excitement of the scene, perhaps by the mere smell of the gun-powder, I forgot the duties to which I was assigned, snatched a musket from a Zouave who had just expired at my feet, and rushed into the heart of the conflict. I received a slight wound in the forehead, staggered, fell, and fainted away. I suppose I must, at the same time, have received the shock from a larger ball than that which grazed my temple, and experienced some concussion of the brain, for I did not fully recover consciousness until I had been transported to the military hospital.