Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/261

Rh when she spoke a language he did not know, than to talk himself or hear any one else.

“His manner towards Margaret was devoted and lover-like to a striking degree. He cared not how trivial was the service if he might perform it for her. I remember to have seen him one morning, after they had been married nearly two years, set off on an errand to get the handle of her parasol mended, with as much genuine knightly zeal as if the charge had been a much weightier one. As he took it, he said, ‘How sweet it is to do little things for you; never attend to such yourself, always leave them to me for my pleasure.’ When she was ill he nursed and watched over her with the tenderness of woman. When she said to him, ‘How have you learned to be so good a nurse,’ he said, ‘My father was ill, and I tended upon him.’ No service was too trivial, no sacrifice too great for him. He never wished her to give up any pleasure because he could not share it, but if she were interested, he would go with her to any house, leave her, and call again to take her home. Such tender, unselfish love I have rarely before seen; it made green her days, and gave her an expression of peace and serenity which before was a stranger to her. ‘No companion in nature was ever so much to me as is Ossoli;’ does not this show that his soul was deep and full of emotion; for who that knew Margaret Fuller would believe that any other companion would have been agreeable to her in her communion with nature. What a beautiful picture is that of their return to Rome after a day spent on the Campagna!”

To this narrative I will add another letter, from Mrs. Story to Mrs. J. R. Lowell, transcribed