But by the time your letter reached me we had recovered the blow _spiritually_, had understood that it was necessary, and that the Emperor Napoleon, though forced to abandon one arena, was prepared to carry on the struggle for Italy on another.
Therefore I should have answered your letter at once if I had not been seized with illness.

Indeed, my dear, dear friend, you will hear from me no excuses.

I have not been unkind, simply incapable.
I believe it was the violent mental agitation, the reaction from a state of exultation and joy in which I had been walking among the stars so many months; and the grief, anxiety, the struggle, the talking, all coming on me at a moment when the ferocious heat had made the body peculiarly susceptible; but one afternoon I went down to the Trollopes, had sight of the famous Ducal orders about bombarding Florence, and came home to be ill.

Violent palpitations and cough; in fact, the worst attack on the chest I ever had in Italy.

For two days and two nights it was more like _angina pectoris_, as I have heard it described; but this went off, and the complaint ran into its ancient pattern, thank God, and kept me _only_ very ill, with violent cough all night long; my poor Robert, who nursed me like an angel, prevented from sleeping for full three weeks.