Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/265

Rh teristic blue-black hair of his nation. The pictures represent a thoroughly Italian face and figure: dark, delicate, slender; by no means the man, one would say, to marry at thirty an American woman of thirty-seven, she being poor, intellectual, and without beauty. Yet it will be very evident, when we come to read their letters to each other, that the disinterested and devoted love which marked this marriage was so far a fulfillment of Margaret Fuller’s early dreams. Mr. Kinney, the American consul, wrote to Mr. Emerson from Turin, May 2, 1851: “It is abundantly evident that her young husband discharged all the obligations of his relation to her con amore. His admiration amounted to veneration, and her yearning to be loved seemed at least to be satisfied.” There is every reason to believe that this statement was none too strong.