Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/225

210 letters the tenor of which would have enabled her to remain longer in Italy. Ossoli remembered the warning of a fortune-teller, who in his childhood had told him to beware of the sea. Margaret wrote of omens which gave her "a dark feeling." She had "a vague expectation of some crisis," she knew not what; and this year, 1850, had long appeared to her a period of pause in the ascent of life, a point at which she should stand, as "on a plateau, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before." She prays fervently that she may not lose her boy at sea, cither by unsolaccd illness, or amid the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief."

These presentments, strangely prophetic, returned upon Margaret with so much force that on the very day appointed for sailing, the 17th of May, she stood at bay before them for an hour, unable to decide whether she should go or stay. But she had appointed a general meeting with her family in July, and had positively engaged her passage in the barque. Fidelity to these engagements prevailed with her. She may have felt, too, the danger of being governed by vague forebodings which, shunning death in one form, often invite it in another. And so, in spite of fears and omens, too well justified in the sequel, she went on board, and the voyage began in smooth tranquillity.

The first days at sea passed quietly enough. The boy played on the deck, or was carried about by the captain. Margaret and her husband suffered little inconvenience from sea-sickness, and were soon walking together in the limited space of their floating home. Buf presently the good captain fell ill with small-pox of a malignant type. On June 3rd the barque