When little Bice had to be
punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched
anxiously for the expiration of the sentence.[1]
[Footnote 1: I do not remember that little Bice ever consoled herself
under the disgrace of such captivity as my present wife has confessed
to me that she did when suffering under the same condemnation. _Her_
method of combining the maintenance of personal dignity with revenge
on the oppressor, was to say to the first person who came to take her
out of prison: "No! you can't come into _my_ parlour!"]
But that her worth, her talent, her social qualities, were recognised
by a wider world than that of her own family, or her own circle of
friends, is testified by the recording stone, which the Municipality
placed on my house at the corner of the Piazza dell' Independenza,
where it may still be seen. Indeed the honour was not undeserved. For
during the whole of her residence in Italy, which nearly synchronised
with the struggle of Italy for her independence and unity, she had
adopted the Italian cause heart and soul, and done what was in her to
do, for its advancement. The honour was rendered the more signal, and
the more acceptable, from the fact that the same had recently been
rendered by the same body to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
CHAPTER XIX.
The house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, which was known in the
city as "Villino Trollope," and of which I have spoken at the close of
the last chapter, was my property, and I had lived in it nearly the
whole of my married life.
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