_June_ 23 [1865], SOUTH STREET. CLARKEY MOHL DARLING--How I should like to see you now. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible. I am sure no one ever gave up so much to live, who longed so much to die, as I do and give up daily. It is the only credit I claim. I will live if I can. I shall be so glad if I can't. I am overwhelmed with business. And I have an Indian functionary now in London, whose work is cut out for him every day at my house. I scarcely even have half an hour's ease. Would you tell M. Mohl this, if you are writing, about the Queen of Holland's proposed visit to me? I really feel it a great honour that she wishes to see me. She is a Queen of Queens. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible.... (_Oct_. 4 [1865]). I am so weak, no one knows how weak I am. Yesterday because I saw Dr. Sutherland for a few minutes in the afternoon, after the morning's work, and my good Mrs. Sutherland for a few minutes after him, I was with a spasm of the heart till 7 o'clock this morning and nearly unfit for work all to-day. In the case of one distinguished visitor to London, Miss Nightingale made an exception. This was Garibaldi. She was a sworn Garibaldian, as we have heard. He wished to see her; she was famous in Italy, and she had subscribed to his funds. Friends told her that she might be able to influence the hero in the direction of her own interests, and with some trepidation she prepared herself to receive him. "I think," wrote Mr. Jowett, "that we may trust God to give us his own calmness and clearness on any great occasion such as this is. I hope you will inspire Garibaldi for the future and not pain him too much about the past. Ten years more of such a life as his might accomplish almost anything for Italy in the way of military organization and sanitary and moral improvement--if he could only see that his duty is not to break the yet immature strength of Italy against Austrian fortresses." Miss Nightingale prepared for the "great occasion" by jotting down in French what she would try to say. "Eh bien! in five years you have made Italy--the work of five centuries. You have worked a miracle. But even you, mon Général, could not make a steam-engine in five minutes. And Italy has to be consolidated into a strong machine, like those which you have been seeing at Bedford," and so forth, and so forth. She tried to keep the fact of the interview secret, but it was chronicled in the newspapers[63]:--