The medical man in attendance, declaring the absolute absurdity of
any doubt on the subject, refused to perform an operation which, he
said, was wholly uncalled for, and argued that my promise could only
be understood to apply to a case of possible doubt. I had none; but
was none the less determined to be faithful to my promise. But it
was not till I declared that I would myself sever a vein, in however
butcher-like a manner, that I induced him to accompany me to the
death-chamber and perform under my eyes the necessary operation.
My mother, the inseparable companion of so many wanderings in so many
lands, the indefatigable labourer of so many years, found her rest
near to the two who had gone from my house before, in the beautiful
little cemetery on which the Apennine looks down.
But it was not long before this sorrow was followed by a very much
sorer one--by the worst of all that could have happened to me! After
what I have written in the last chapter it is needless to say anything
of the blank despair that fell upon me when my wife died, on the 13th
of April, 1865. She also lies near the others.
My house was indeed left unto me desolate, and I thought that life and
all its sweetness was over for me!
I immediately took measures for disposing of the house in the Piazza
dell' Independenza, and before long found a purchaser for it. I had
bought it when the speculator, who had become the owner of the ground
at the corner of the space which was beginning to assume the semblance
of a "square" or "piazza," had put in the foundations but had not
proceeded much further with his work.
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