I had known the lady whom Pulszky married in Vienna many years previously, and long before he knew her.  She was the daughter of that highly cultivated Jewish family of whom I have spoken before.  When I first knew her she was as pretty and charming a young girl as could be imagined.  She was possessed then of all the accomplishments that can adorn a girl at that period of life.  Later on she showed that she was gifted with sense, knowledge, energy, firmness, courage and caractere in a degree very uncommon.  Since leaving Vienna I had neither seen nor heard more of her, till she came to live with her husband and family of children in Florence.  But our old acquaintanceship was readily and naturally renewed, and his villa near the city became one of the houses I best loved to frequent.  She had at that time, and even well-nigh I take it in those old days at Vienna, abandoned all seeming of conformity to the practices of the faith she was born in.

I used to say of Pulszky that he was like a barrel full to the bung with generous liquor, which flowed in a full stream, stick the spigot in where you would.  He was—­is, I am happy to say is the proper tense In his case—­a most many-sided man.  His talk on artistic subjects, mainly historical and biographical, was abundant and most amusing.  His antiquarian knowledge was large.  His ethnographical learning, theories, and speculations were always interesting and often most suggestive.  Years had, I think, put some water in the wine of his political ideas, but not enough to prevent differences between us on such subjects.  He was withal—­there again I mean “is,” for I am sure that years and the air of his beloved Pesth cannot have put any water in that generous and genial wine—­a fellow of infinite jest, and full of humour; in a word, one of the fullest and most delightful companions I have ever known.  He talked English with no further accent than served to add a raciness to the flavour of his conversation; and every morning of one fixed day in the week he used to come to Ricorboli for what he called a tobacco parliament.

I used frequently to spend the evening at his villa, where one met a somewhat extraordinary cosmopolitan gathering.  Generally we had some good music; for Madame Pulszky was—­unhappily in her case the past tense is needed—­a very perfect musician.  Among other people more or less off the world’s beaten track, I used to meet there a very extraordinary Russian, who had accomplished the rare feat of escaping from Siberia.  He was a Nihilist of the most uncompromising type; a huge, shaggy man, with an unkempt head and chest like those of a bear; and by his side—­more or less—­there was a pretty, petite, dainty little young wife—­beauty and the beast, if ever that storied couple were seen in the flesh!

Many years afterwards when I and my wife saw Pulszky at Pesth, and were talking of old times, he reminded me of this person; and on my doubting that any man in his senses could believe in the practicability of the extreme Nihilist theories, he instanced our old acquaintance, saying, “Yes, there is a man, who in his very inmost conscience believes that no good of any sort can be achieved for humanity till the sponge shall have been passed over all that men have instituted and done, and a perfect tabula rasa has been substituted for it!”