protecting wing." With this letter (or, possibly, with another written
the same day) was found an enclosure, undated and unsigned, but in
Nelson's handwriting. "My beloved, how I feel for your situation and
that of our dear Horatia, our dear child...."[21]

The indifference to incidental consequences which was shown by Nelson,
when once he had decided upon a course of action, was part of his
natural, as well as of his more distinctively military character; but
in this connection with Lady Hamilton he must have felt intuitively
that not only her reputation--which probably was his first care--was
involved, but his own also. The hospitality, the attention, the
friendship, extended to him at Naples and Palermo, were not from Lady
Hamilton only but from her husband also, in whose house he lived, and
who to the end, so far as the records show, professed for him
unbounded esteem and confidence. This confidence had been betrayed,
and the strongest line of argument formerly advanced, by those who
disputed Lady Hamilton's being the mother of the child, has become now
Nelson's severest condemnation.

"However great was Nelson's infatuation," says Sir Harris Nicolas,
"his nice sense of honour, his feelings of propriety, and his love of
truth, were unquestionable. Hence, though during a long separation
from his wife on the public service in the Mediterranean, he so far
yielded to temptation as to become the father of a child, it is
nevertheless difficult to believe that he should for years have had a
criminal intercourse with the wife of a man of his own rank, whom he
considered as his dearest friend, who placed the greatest confidence
in his honour and virtue, and in whose house he was living. Still more
difficult is it to believe, even if this had been the case, that he
should not only have permitted every one of his relations, male and