DEATH OF VICTOR EMMANUEL AND PIUS IX
A Peasant Costume
Less than two years had passed since the accession to power of the Left when Italy was stunned by a calamity as great as it was unexpected. At the end of 1877 the king went to Turin to pass Christmas. Going on a hunting expedition at the foot of the Alps he remained two days defying the cold of the season. On his return to Rome he felt very unwell, having shivering fits and nausea; but he paid no attention, thinking it was a passing indisposition. He took to his bed January 6th. Three days later Victor Emmanuel was no more.
At this time Pope Pius IX was also on his death-bed. Hearing that Victor Emmanuel was at the point of death he gave his consent to the Viatico being carried to him, though the Quirinal was a forbidden spot. And when he heard that he was dead he exclaimed that he had died as a Christian, a sovereign, and an honest man. A few days later he followed him to the tomb.
What a multitude of thoughts arise in the mind as we see these two tombs open almost contemporaneously, one to receive the remains of the last pope-king, and the other those of the first king of Italy. In these two men are personified one of the greatest epochs of history, an epoch fertile in the most glorious events which can take place in a nation. It is the epoch of a free state and a risen nation. And these two men were the artificers of the prodigious event—Pius IX by the religious impulse given to the Italian revolution in its first phases; Victor Emmanuel by having constituted himself the champion of independence of unity and of the liberty of Italy. From this moment the two men drifted apart. Pius IX resumed the life traced for him by papal tradition. Victor Emmanuel remained faithful to his mission and did his duty to the last day of his life. A grateful nation by the mouth of its representatives proclaimed him “The Father of his country.”[e]