Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/288

270 Italian or American citizen. It depends on the course events take here politically.”

And now the pen that had so often described the beauties of nature or art or literature is used again and again to portray the charming gambols of a little child. Here, for instance, is a passage only partially printed in the “Memoirs,” while I give it in full; or it may be that this is a companion-picture sent to another person at about the same time, and using many of the same words: —

“When our little boy wakes, he always beckons and cries to come into our room. He draws the curtains himself with his little dimpled hand; he laughs, he crows, he dances in the nurse’s arms, he shows his teeth, he blows like the bellows, pretends to snuff candles, and then, having shown off all his accomplishments, calls for his playthings. With these he will amuse himself on the floor while we are dressing, sometimes an hour after. Then he goes to the window to hear the Austrian drums, to which he keeps time, with head and hand. It is soon eleven, and he sleeps again. Then I employ myself. When he wakes, we go out to some church, or picture-gallery or museum, almost always taking him.”

This was written in Florence, where they took up their residence after the entrance of the French army into Rome. She busied herself with her history of the Italian struggle, and he with efforts to rescue his share of his father’s estate. Another picture of child-life records their very last Christmas Day: —