you plenty of good things, {17} and as many kisses as you like."



CHAPTER XLIV.



The month of October brought round one of the most disagreeable
anniversaries in my life. I was arrested on the 13th of that month
in the preceding year. Other recollections of the same period, also
pained me. That day two years, a highly valued and excellent man
whom I truly honoured, was drowned in the Ticino. Three years
before, a young person, Odoardo Briche, {18} whom I loved as if he
had been my own son, had accidentally killed himself with a musket.
Earlier in my youth another severe affliction had befallen me in the
same month.

Though not superstitious, the remembrance of so many unhappy
occurrences at the same period of the year, inspired a feeling of
extreme sorrow. While conversing at the window with the children,
and with my fellow prisoners, I assumed an air of mirth, but hardly
had I re-entered my cave than an irresistible feeling of melancholy
weighed down every faculty of my mind. In vain I attempted to
engage in some literary composition; I was involuntarily impelled to
write upon other topics. I thought of my family, and wrote letters
after letters, in which I poured forth all my burdened spirit, all I
had felt and enjoyed of home, in far happier days, surrounded by
brothers, sisters, and friends who had always loved me. The desire
of seeing them, and long compulsory separation, led me to speak on a