After an interregnum of some months came another bed-warmer for General King, this one a New York politician, also a friend of Seward’s, an ancient politician, who had recently married a young wife desirous of a stay in some European capital, and, if possible, at the expense of the government.  These at least were gentlefolk, and paid their bills without doing anything to scandalize the Romans.  They spent the winter and went home, and finally came General King.

Finding that my fees and sales of pictures (for I had taken up my painting again and had sold a few small pictures) amounted to about six hundred dollars a year, and were slowly increasing, I decided to go home and bring my wife and child out.  I had been absent more than a year, and several months after being in Rome had the news of the birth of a son.  It was near being my death, for, on the evening of receiving the news, I had gone to make a call on an English lady who lived in the Villa Negroni, where the railway station now is, and close by the prison where all the political offenders were kept, and which was guarded by French soldiers.  I was in a vein of profound meditation on the news I had just received, and absorbed to that extent that I kept on my course along the sidewalk in front of the prison, walking towards the sentry, and did not hear his challenge till it had been repeated three times, when I heard his rifle rattle as it came down to the take aim, and suddenly became conscious that I had heard a sound, the meaning of which must be “Qui vive?” I sung out lustily, “Ami” and was told that if I was a friend the other side of the road was my place.

I had discovered that the consular agent left by my predecessor at Civita Vecchia was engaged in a system of espionage on behalf of the Papal authorities, and had been issuing American passports to spies whom they were employing in Italian territory, and I at once dismissed him and informed the Italian government through Mr. Marsh, our minister to Italy, and received a letter of thanks from that government.  From Washington a new consular agent was sent, and, putting him in charge of the consulate, I started for home, going by way of Turin, to see Mr. Marsh, and by diligence over Mont Cenis.  Subsequent events brought me much in contact with that admirable diplomat and scholar, at that time the one bright feature of our diplomatic service on the Continent.  Our government received great credit for sending such a man abroad to represent us, but the chance of it was in the fact that he was closely related to Senator Edmunds of Vermont, whose influence with the administration was sufficient to secure any single nomination he insisted on, and who did insist on the maintenance of Marsh in the diplomatic service.  As Marsh had been conspicuous in the advocacy of the Italian cause during the unitary movement, he was designated by the circumstances for the American legation to Italy, in which he honored his appointment as few of our representatives at that epoch had done.