thank Madame d'Alte for the hox. She is English, and took a 'passion' for the entire, Bunsen family in London. There was a whole circle of people at her house, and I was introduced to all, but do, not
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remember much about them. She was very oddly dressed, receiving her company in a white bonnet and a linsey-woolsey gown with a velvet cloak. We also called on the Oomtesse Robilant. She is a German, the daughter of a Former Prussian minister at Turin, very agreeable, and speaking French very well. She was first lady to the late Queen of Sardinia, and receives in a beautiful old-fashioned boudoir in an old house. She seems a great friend of O.'s, was very kind to me, and seemed pleased at onr going to her at once.
"M. Uebel was there also. There is a sort of queer family feeling in meeting in other houses a member of the same legation. Altogether I am beginning to have some notion of things now, and like it very much so far.
"The weather has been very bad since our arrival here, and we have not been able to go about much. We have very nearly fixed on an apartment—a very pretty one. It was arranged for a young married couple in the Sardinian diplomacy—Marquis and Marquise Spinola, who have been sent off as attachés to Rome. At present it is let to some English people, who only leave it in about a fortnight. All the other lodgings we saw were positively disgusting, and everybody says we ought to be too thankful to get these. The drawing-room is really charming: all the furniture in palissandre and dark-blue velvet, étagères full of pretty trifles, and a piano d'Erard. There is a second drawing-room, two bedrooms, a large dining-room very devoid of furniture, a smoky kitchen, two servants' rooms, and no cupboards Such is what in all likelihood will be our future abode."
It was at a most interesting time that I happened to arrive at Turin. Just nine years before, in 1848, the late King Carlo Alberto had given a constitution, called "Statute Fundamentale," to his people and thrown in his lot with the cause of Italian liberty and independence. He and his sons bad made two campaigns against the Austrian forces occupying the Lombardo Venetian territory, but althouh they had met with success on the battle-fields of Pastrengo and Goiöto, and Pesehiera, one of the fortreses of le famous Quadrilateral,[1] had fallen into their hands, they were ultimately obliged to return across the Mincio, and sustained a crushing defeat at Novara on March 23, 1849. Carlo Alberto, broken-hearted at this disaster. abdicated on the battle-field in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II. and left his country for exile, where he soon died.
Never perhaps did a young king begin his reign under more depressing conditions—a difficult peace to negotiate with Austria, a defeated army, ruined finances,
- ↑ So called from a sort of square formed by the fortresses of Peschiera, Verona, Mantua, and Legnago, and supposed to be one of the most important strongholds in Italy.
