Dearest Kitty,--Seventeen long and closely written pages to you--the warm out-gushings of my heart--have I just consigned to the flames. They contained the journal of my life in Florence,--all my thoughts and hopes, my terrors, my anxieties, and my day-dreams. Why, then, will you say, have they met this fate? I will tell you, Kitty. Of the feelings there recorded, of the emotions depicted, of the very events themselves, nothing--absolutely nothing--now remains; and my poor, distracted, forlorn heart no more resembles the buoyant spirit of yesterday than the blackened embers before me are like the carefully inscribed pages I had once destined for your hand. Pity me, dearest Kitty,--pour out every compassionate thought of your kindred heart, and let me feel that, as the wind sweeps over the snowy Apennines, it bears the tender sighs of your affection to one who lives but to be loved! But a week ago, and what a world was opening before me,--a world brilliant in all that makes life a triumph! We were launched upon the sunny sea of high society, our "argosy" a noble and stately ship; and now, Kitty, we lie stranded, shattered, and shipwrecked. Do not expect from me any detailed account of our disasters. I am unequal to the task. It is not at the moment of being cast away that the mariner can recount the story of his wreck. Enough if these few lines be like the chance words which, enclosed in a bottle, are committed to the waves, to tell at some distant date and in some far-away land the tale of impending ruin. It is in vain I try to collect my thoughts: feelings too acute to be controlled burst in upon me at each moment and my sobs convulse me as I write. These lines must therefore bear the impress of the emotions that dictate them, and be broken, abrupt, mayhap incoherent! He is false, Kitty!--false to the heart that he had won, and the affections where he sat enthroned! Yes, by the blackest treason has he requited my loyalty and rewarded my devotion. If ever there was a pure and holy love, it was mine. It was not the offspring of self-interest, for I knew that he was married; nor was I buoyed up by dreams of ambition, for I always knew the great difficulty of obtaining a divorce. But I loved him, as the classic maiden wept,--because it was inconsolable! It is not in my heart to deny the qualities of his gifted nature. No, Kitty, not even now can I depreciate them. How accomplished as a linguist!--how beautifully he drove!--how exquisitely he danced!--what perfection was his dress!--how fascinating his manners! There was--so to say--an idiosyncrasy--an idealism about him; his watchguard was unlike any other,--the very perfume of his pocket-handkerchief was the invention of his own genius.