The following are the circumstances which led to the publication of the Letters here presented to the reader.
Toward the end of April, last year, (1857,) as I was returning from Rome, I stopped at Pisa. The hand of God conducted me then into the midst of a family, of whose unclouded happiness I had been the witness only a few months before, but which had now, alas! been visited by death. It was one of those sudden, heart-rending bereavements which make one falter on the desolated threshold of his friend, and which chill on one's lips the tenderest words of consolation.
What would you say to the father and mother who lose an only daughter—their joy, their life, and, moreover, the pride and the edification of a whole town? Better be silent and ask God to speak.
Happily, in this case, God did speak; and the noble souls whose sorrows are to be recounted here, were of the number of those who know his voice.
After the first tears and the first outpouring of a grief which time rendered only the more poignant, the poor mother asked me to accompany her to the house where her daughter had died, and which she herself had quitted from that day. A servant belonging to one of the neighboring houses had the keys of this funereal dwelling, and he opened the doors for us. We expected to find only the presence of death and the vivid remembrance of the sorrows of yesterday in the silence of those deserted chambers; but Christian charity had watched over the spot, and from our first steps a delicate perfume of roses betrayed its loving attentions. Indeed, we found the chamber of the dead girl strewn with flowers. They were fresh, some faithful hand having renewed them that very morning. This unlooked-for spectacle awakened in our minds the thought that the Christian's death is not so much a death as a transformation of life. Therefore it was that, when, kneeling near the poor sobbing mother, I asked her if she wished me to recite the De Profundis, she answered in a firm voice and almost smiling, "No, let us recite the Te Deum."
The hymn concluded, I led the pious woman from that room where her sorrow seemed changed into exultation, and I said to her on the way: "From all that I know, from all that I can learn of your daughter, she was a saint. The delicate piety of your neighbors attests how powerful is still the recollection of her: the example of her life, and the details of her holy death, must not be lost. You must preserve them for the edification of her companions; for the edification of the town which has known her, loved her, venerated her; for the edification of ourselves also, who must one day die, and whom the examples of all holy deaths encourage and support." I was not the first to express this desire; many friends had anticipated me in begging for a history which they believed well calculated to reflect honor on our holy religion.
Before I left Pisa, I had obtained the desired promise, pledging myself, at the same time, to make known in France, to some Christian readers, this history, wrung from the anguish of a mother by the single desire of promoting the glory of God. Some months later, the book appeared at Florence, with the following title, Rosa Ferrucci, and some of her Writings, published under the supervision of her Mother. It remains, then, for me to fulfil, on my part, the pious obligation I have contracted.
Rosa Ferrucci was the daughter of the celebrated Professor Ferrucci, of the University of Pisa, and of the Signora Caterina Ferrucci, a lady well known in Italy for her poetry, and for some excellent works on education. It is little more than a year since this young girl was, by her brilliant intellectual gifts and the holiness of her life, the honor of the city of Pisa. The grave habits of a Christian family, all the veils, all the precautions, all the fears of modesty, had not been able to shield her from a sort of religious admiration which she inspired in all who saw her. How prevent mothers from pointing out the holy child to their daughters, or the poor from blessing her as she passed? Rosa possessed natural talents of a high order, and her education was singularly favorable to the full development of every gift of mind and heart. At six years of age she read Italian, French, and German. At a later period she knew by heart the whole of the Divine Comedy. She read in the original, under the direction of her mother, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus; and, among modern authors, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Fleury, Milton, Schiller, Klopstock. I mention at random the authors' quoted by her in her letters to her friends, passing by writers of our own day. She has left a correspondence in three languages—French, German, and Italian. The greater number of the Italian letters are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, Signor Gaetano Orsini, a distinguished lawyer and perfect Christian, to whom Rosa was betrothed, and whose hopes have been shattered by her death. Each part of her correspondence is remarkable, but it is of the last-mentioned letters that I propose particularly to speak. Independently of her correspondence, Signorina Ferrucci wrote many short treatises on religion and Christian morality, several of which have been published since her death.
Here, then, we find in a young girl a degree of mental cultivation—a depth of learning, I might say—which would be remarkable in a man even of distinguished education. To dwell long on gifts so rare would interfere with the object I proposed to myself in writing this little history. I will, then, remark here, once for all, that, having for several weeks lived on terms of intimacy with this excellent family, I have witnessed in this extraordinary girl only a child-like modesty, which made her always skilful in self-concealment.
I omit, then, all that relates to this intellectual culture, and to this taste for classical learning—a taste which was so pure, so exalted, in this young Christian maiden. Understood and accepted in Italy, this literary turn of mind would seem strange in France, where there exists an extravagant fear of raising woman above a certain intellectual level. I prefer, therefore, having said on this point merely what was necessary, to speak henceforth only of the virtues of the saintly girl.