TO W.H.C.
Rieti, Aug. 28, 1849.—You say, you are glad I have had this great opportunity for carrying out my principles. Would it were so! I found myself inferior in courage and fortitude to the occasion. I knew not how to bear the havoc and anguish incident to the struggle for these principles. I rejoiced that it lay not with me to cut down the trees, to destroy the Elysian gardens, for the defence of Rome; I do not know that I could have done it. And the sight of these far nobler growths, the beautiful young men, mown down in their stately prime, became too much for me. I forget the great ideas, to sympathize with the poor mothers, who had nursed their precious forms, only to see them all lopped and gashed. You say, I sustained them; often have they sustained my courage: one, kissing the pieces of bone that were so painfully extracted from his arm, hanging them round his neck to be worn as the true relics of to-day; mementoes that he also had done and borne something for his country and the hopes of humanity. One fair young man, who is made a cripple for life, clasped my hand as he saw me crying over the spasms I could not relieve, and faintly cried, "Viva l'Italia." "Think only, cara bona donna" said a poor wounded soldier, "that I can always wear my uniform on festas, just as it is now, with the holes where the balls went through, for a memory." "God is good; God knows," they often said to me, when I had not a word to cheer them.
THE WIFE AND MOTHER.[A]
Beneath the ruins of the Roman Republic, how many private fortunes were buried! and among these victims was Margaret. In that catastrophe, were swallowed up hopes sacredly cherished by her through weary months, at the risk of all she most prized.
Soon after the entrance of the French, she wrote thus, to the resident
Envoy of the United States:
My dear Mr. Cass,—I beg you to come and see me, and give me your counsel, and, if need be, your aid, to get away from Rome. From what I hear this morning, I fear we may be once more shut up here; and I shall die, to be again separated from what I hold most dear. There are, as yet, no horses on the way we want to go, or we should post immediately.
You may feel, like me, sad, in these last moments, to leave this injured Rome. So many noble hearts I abandon here, whose woes I have known! I feel, if I could not aid, I might soothe. But for my child, I would not go, till some men, now sick, know whether they shall live or die.
* * * * *
Her child! Where was he? In RIETI,—at the foot of the Umbrian
Apennines,—a day's journey to the north-east of Rome. Thither
Margaret escaped with her husband, and thence she wrote the following
letter:
Dearest Mother,—I received your letter a few hours before leaving Rome. Like all of yours, it refreshed me, and gave me as much satisfaction as anything could, at that sad time. Its spirit is of eternity, and befits an epoch when wickedness and perfidy so impudently triumph, and the best blood of the generous and honorable is poured out like water, seemingly in vain.