The King of Sardinia was spoken of among the liberals as a worthless man, without heart or honor, only likely to be kept on the right side by the stress of circumstance. This judgment of him was reversed in after years, when, behind Casa Guidi windows, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, with steadfast hand, "Yea, verily. Charles Albert has died well."
The royalty of Naples tried to quiet its tremors with blood, and trembled still. And in the midst of all this turmoil, down comes Louis Philippe from his throne, and France is shaken to her very centre.
To follow Margaret through all the fluctuations and excitements consequent upon these events would be no easy task. She was obviously in close relations with leading Italian liberals, and probably trusted their statements and shared their hopes, fears, and resentments. Constant always in her faith in human nature, and in her zeal for the emancipation of Italy, the dissolving view before her could leave her no other fixed belief. Her favorites, her beloved Italian people, even her adored Rome, appeared to her at different times in very various lights.
Starting from the date given above, we will[218] follow, as well as we can, her progress through the constantly shifting scenes that surrounded her, from whose intense interest she could not, for one moment, isolate herself.
Of her return to Rome, Margaret says: "All mean things were forgotten in the joy that rushed over me like a flood." The difference between a sight-seeing tour and a winter's residence in such a place is indeed like that between a chance acquaintance and an intimate one. Settled in a pleasant apartment on the Corso, "in a house of loving Italians," Margaret promised herself a winter of "tranquil companionship" with what she calls "the true Rome."
She did not find the Italian autumn beautiful, as she had expected, but she enjoyed the October festas of the Trasteverini, and went with "half Rome" to see the manœuvres of the Civic Guard on the Campagna, near the tomb of Cecilia Metella.
To the music of the "Bolognese March" six thousand Romans moved in battle array, in full sight of the grandiose débris of the heroic time.
Some sight-seeing Margaret still undertook, as we learn from a letter dated November 17, in which she speaks of going about "in a coach with several people," and confesses that she dissipates her thoughts on outward beauty. Such[219] was her delight, at this time, in the "atmosphere of the European mind," that she even wished, for a time, to be delivered from the sound of the English language.
The beginning of this winter was, as it usually is in Italy, a season of fine weather. On the 17th of December Margaret rises to bask in beneficent floods of sunlight, and to find upon her table the roses and grapes which, in New England, would have been costly hot-house luxuries. Her letter of this date is full of her delight in having penetrated from the outer aspect to the heart of Rome, classic, mediæval, and modern. And here we come upon the record of those first impressions concerning which we latterly indulged in some speculation.
"Ah! how joyful to see once more this Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome first viewed in unutterable dismay from the coupé of the vettura,—a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilest valets de place, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! Ah! why (secretly the heart blasphemed) did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell beneath his ray?"