to look at his wife's picture, and make his bow to all the people who knew him, as "Manuello, the emigrant Italian," hunting up his sempstress and washerwoman, to make their old age comfortable, and talking religion with paralytic vicars and learned curates. Ah! that illness of mine was a sad thing! it divided us, as it were, the moment we came together, and, by leaving him to his conscience and his reminiscences, positively ruined him."
"I have scarcely seen him; but he appeared to me very happy and exceedingly agreeable; I could almost say captivating, for a man of his age."
"That's the very thing I complain of; he makes himself happy under such degrading circumstances; he has actually nursed Louisa's child two hours at a time, sometimes singing the exquisite compositions of his own country, sometimes weeping over it, and calling it his own sweet Manuello. When he resigned it, he would go to prayers at one of the churches; yet, at that very time, there was a Jew's widow, as rich as Crœsus, and really beautiful, watching his every motion, and at length leaving Brighton in despair. My medical men mentioned it as a most extraordinary thing, and well they might. They had never known an Englishman so utterly blind to his own interest."
"But, dear mamma, you could not surely wish my uncle Riccardini should marry after he had declared my father's children should be his children?"
"Of course, I do not want him to marry. I only say he is a fool for not doing it."
