"I cannot well describe my feelings as I sat beside her in the Ambassador's coach. All day long in her shepherdess hat, she had been half tomboy, half affectionate daughter, always like a fresh young girl. And now, after bare leisure to cool down as I should have thought, she was sitting by my side in a most superb costume--the great lady all over--a veritable queen in condescension. In the short drive from the Embassy to the Royal Palace she was all solicitude for me, fearing a return of the fever after the drenching of the afternoon; but, praise God, I felt no ill result. It is truly wonderful what effect my spirits have upon my health. When I have the enemy within cannon-shot, or the society of those I love, nothing mortal seems able to hurt me. "I have wrote 'love,' and must confess to you, my Pen, that it startles me when I see it in black upon the white paper; and yet I suppose it is so. And why should I not love? It is the purest, I am sure, of human feelings, such love as mine: God knows I would die for Emma, as I would die for my country. I pray that I may never be the villain to her. There has been love, I know, perfectly pure between a man and woman, which has yet been most disastrous for the man, if not for his country also. But, thank Heaven, this is not so with Emma. It has been entirely for the advancement of our country, of which I have been permitted to be the instrument. Without that wonderful woman we should never have got to my battle at all: it was she who secured us our supplies at Syracuse; a very little malevolence might have turned the sea into the drinking water, and sent the provisions out of reach into the interior. And now it is she who is working upon the innate slothfulness, I might say cowardice, and irresponsibility of those who administer this unhappy kingdom, to support its noble Queen in that active policy against the French which will lead to so much glory and send that lying and apostate race, the enemies of mankind, packing out of the Peninsula. In after days no one shall say that Nelson was dragged down by his friendship for Emma, or wiled from his duty into hanging attendance, but rather that it was she who inspired him to fresh exertions and had no thought but for his country. "All this passed through my mind in that short coach-drive, as she laid her cool hand anxiously upon my lately-heated head, and reassured herself that there was no fever in my pulse.