But Elsje put to shame my false pride and gladly and helpfully busied
herself with this little troop of humanity blown together from all the
quarters of the globe, making herself understood and loved in all sorts
of ways in the overflowing joy of her new life.
I myself was not very cheerful, but more often profoundly grave and
sad, though with that rich and gentle melancholy that leads to sublime
thought. Above all the memory of my children could make me deeply
dejected and silent for hours. When I imagined that they would fall
ill, or that they cried because of my absence, it was as though my
inmost heart was torn, or strange hands were wringing the entrails of
my soul. I had heard nothing of them before my departure with the
exception of one brief, comforting word from my second daughter, the
third in age of my children, a shrinking, gentle girl of sixteen. She
wrote in Italian:
"My dear father, I don't know why you have gone away, and I dare not
ask mother or the others about it, for they don't quite understand and
take it amiss and won't speak of you.
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