He was called by the Church "Father Francesco," and although so young, was noted for his eloquence, subtile philosophy, and the boldness of his political utterances. But notwithstanding his pronounced views, the Pope named him as one of his secretaries. The College of the Propagandists, however, refused to confirm him, and placed him under interrogation and discipline. He eloquently defended himself, and the charges were not sustained. The severe discipline ended to which he had been subjected, and he was assigned to duty in the purlieus of the Eternal City.
In a short time, Matteo Boccalini's sunny nature and warm passions caused his disgrace. He became enamored of a fair devotee, one of his charge—a dark-haired, lustrous-eyed, bewitching creature of the "Land of the Vine." Alas! the too susceptible young priest succumbed to the wiles of the "radiant maiden," and he fell in a most earthly and fleshly way. Poor Boccalini was immediately and openly charged with the enormity of his crime, prosecuted, and denounced. He was despoiled of his sacerdotal functions, and compelled to flee; became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, supping with sorrow, and in despair for companions throughout the remainder of his mundane pilgrimage.
For a short time after his unwarranted and sinful escapade he campaigned with the heroic Garibaldi; then he turned with appealing looks toward America, the haven for all who are oppressed; crossed the ocean, and in a few weeks began his eventful journey on this continent. Never again was he to behold the place of his birth, the chalky outlines of fair, beautiful Capri, which so gloriously begems the Mediterranean. The phosphorescent Bay of Naples, the sky, the sunshine and vine-clad hills of dear old Italy, were never more to stir his once impulsive nature, or quicken into life his now deadened heart.
Years rolled on; youth passed by and middle age was upon the homeless priest, when, after having roamed wearily from place to place, visiting one Indian tribe here and another there, in the vain hope of discovering some clan, or people near unto nature's heart, whose souls were attuned to his own, who would receive him in the simplicity of his severe and pious penance, he arrived among the Kaws, or Kansas, whose reservation was in the lovely valley of the Neosho, a few miles below Council Grove. But that tribe, a dirty, despicable race, very suspicious, and withal not remarkable for their reverence of any religion, did not take kindly to the weary old man, who had entered their midst with the purest intentions: his pious zeal, his abstinence and self-denial made them fear to approach him. They did not understand that—
"When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation."
The miserable savages looked upon him, the meek and humble pilgrim, as an intruder; said he was "bad medicine." So Father Francesco was no more at ease with them in their rude skin lodges than he would have been in the gilded halls of the Vatican.
He then came to Council Grove, as stated—came as the tramp has since come, unheralded and uninvited, but not to beg bread at the doors of its residents, as the latter now does. Nor did he come to tell off his beads in the presence of the vulgar curious, but went upon the hillside beyond the town, to seek the solitude and retirement of a natural cave in the limestone rock of the region, troubling no one; an enigma to the world, and a subject for the idle gossip.
There for five months he lived, accessible to but few, with whom, when he felt and recognized in them the quickened glow of a soul that believed in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, he would talk in tenderest strains of everything that was good, true, and beautiful.