Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/348

358 husband. That poetical, artistic nature, which is regardless of the earthly, which can hardly take care of her own life and her own peace; that gifted but facile child, is so unusually lonely in the world! Waldo, on the other hand, is of a combative nature; he has fought his way up through life, and now stands there, both spiritually and temporally, on a firm basis. But this same firm nature, has in it something singularly tender and care-taking. When he was a child, early motherless, and very solitary in his father's house, he endeavored to catch little birds, merely for the pleasure of looking after them, and making them tame and happy. And I suspect that it is also something of the same kind, which leads him to try with kind words and flowers, to catch the little Princess Elsa. Yet he evidently loves also in her, the earnest and nobly-thinking young woman, with her decided sympathies for the rights and well-being of humanity, and her fervent hatred of all violence and injustice. There is in this slight girl a great moral courage, and that he saw at the moment when he became her protector. She has an especially warm feeling for the Italian people; considers them to be misunderstood and ill-treated, and in this she and I entirely sympathize.

“If any one,” said she to me one day, “speaks ill of the Italians, I feel as if they trampled upon my heart!” I have besought of her not hastily to reject tbe offer of Waldo's hand, if, as I have a presentiment, it be made. Amongst the many such offers that she has had, it seems to me that, all things taken into