The sufferings and the wrongs of this interesting stranger found a ready sympathy in Cardinal Mezzofanti’s generous heart. He listened to her narrative with deep indignation, and took the liveliest interest in all the arrangements for her safe and fitting reception and that of her companions.
I was naturally anxious to hear what, on the other hand, were the abbess’s impressions of the cardinal. In reply to the inquiries of my friend, Rev. Dr. Morris, she “spoke of him in the very highest terms.” “He was,” she said, “a living saint,” and she described both his charity and his spirituality as very remarkable. When Father Ryllo (the Jesuit Rector of the Propaganda before F. Bresciani) left Rome for the African Mission, Cardinal Mezzofanti became Mother Makrena’s director, and continued to be so for two years. “He spoke Polish,” she declares, “like a native of Poland, and wrote it with great correctness.” Having ascertained that the abbess had had a considerable packet of papers written by him in Polish, generally on those occasions when he could not come to her as usual, on various spiritual subjects, I was most anxious to obtain copies of them; but I was deeply mortified to learn that they were all unfortunately lost in the Revolution, when she was driven out of her little convent near Santa Maria Maggiore. This humble community was afterwards increased by the arrival of other fugitives from different parts of the Russian Empire; nor did the cardinal cease till the very last days of his life his anxious care of all their spiritual and temporal interests.
Another religious institution to which he devoted a good deal of his time was the House of Catechumens, of which, as has already been stated, he was Cardinal Protector. When M. Manavit was in Rome the inmates of this establishment, then in preparation for baptism, were between thirty and forty, several of whom were Moors or natives of Algeria; and there are few who will not cordially agree with him[543] in looking upon “the modest Cardinal, catechism in hand, in the midst of this humble flock, as a nobler picture, more truly worthy of admiration, than delivering his most learned dissertation on the Vedas to the most brilliant company that ever assembled in the halls of the Propaganda.”
In this, and in more than one other charitable institution of Rome, the Cardinal took especial delight in assisting at the First Communion of the young inmates; and, from the simple fervour of his manner and the genuine truthfulness of his piety, he was most happy and effective in the little half hortatory, half ejaculatory discourses, called Fervorini, which in Rome ordinarily, on occasions of a First Communion, precede the actual administration of the sacrament.
M. Manavit adds that, even after Mezzofanti became cardinal, his old character of Confessario dei Forestieri (“Foreigners’ Confessor”) was by no means a sinecure. To many of the Polish exiles, clergy and laity, who visited or settled in Rome, he acted as director, especially after Father Ryllo’s departure to Africa. He was equally accessible to low and high degree. M. Mouravieff[544] (the Russian traveller already cited) mentions an instance in which, having heard of a poor servant maid, a young Russian girl, who desired to be received into the Church, he paid her repeated visits, instructed her in the catechism, and himself completed in person every part of her preparation for the sacraments.
The death of Pope Gregory XVI., (June 1st, 1846) which, although in a ripe old age, was at the time entirely unexpected, was a great affliction to Mezzofanti, whose affectionate relations with him were maintained to the very last. The Cardinal was, of course, a member of the conclave in which (June 16th) Pius IX. was elected. The speedy and unanimous agreement of the Cardinals in this election—one of the few which seemed to convert the traditional form of “election by inspiration,” into a reality—was commemorated impromptu by him in the following graceful epigram:—
Gregorius cœlo invectus sic protinus orat:
“Heu cito Pastorem da, bone Christe, gregi!”
Audit; et immissus pervadit pectora Patrum,