[Footnote 80: Léopardi.]
But only the saints know its true secret: "Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ." [Footnote 81]
[Footnote 81: Phil. I. 23.]
When the young soul of whom we now speak had reached a certain elevation in her flight toward God, she, too, met the sweet and austere company of those two strong-winged angels—Christian love and death. She loved: almost as soon she presaged death, and she died. But she loved as a child of God loves, and she died as a saint.
I have, then, little more to do than to translate her Letters, in which shines gloriously the beauty of Christian love, and to give an account of that death worthy of the church's brightest days. As I have already remarked, these Letters are addressed to a young gentleman of Leghorn, to whom Rosa had been betrothed for two years before her death; a truly noble character whom heaven seemed to have made worthy of her. A profound and tender love united these two kindred souls. The simple and sweet manners of good Italian society allowed their seeing each other often, and did not forbid their almost daily correspondence. An entire conformity of faith, of piety, of holy desires, blended into a still closer union those hearts already so strongly bound to each other; but a more celestial ray was continually passing from the soul of Rosa into that of Gaetano. Through her joys, her hopes, the festive preparations for her wedding, and the dreams of the future, this pious young girl always saw God. One idea, immense and insatiable, was dominant over all her desires, the idea of perfection. She gazed through the veil of her joyous dawnings on the divine sun of eternal beauty. Her happiness embellished earth to her, but the earth thus embellished immediately reminded her of heaven; earthly love put a song on her lips, but the song soon became a hymn, and always ended with God. It is this insensible and almost involuntary transition, of which she herself seems unconscious, from an earthly affection to ardent longings after divine love and perfection, which constitutes all the beauty of her Letters. The reader must not forget that they were written by one who was little more than a child, and that whatever there was of maturity in her young soul was derived from that sun of Christian faith whose warm rays ripen the intellect, in the continued childhood of the heart.
I would fain believe that this young Christian's sisters in the faith, will find in her Letters something more than a subject of poetical dreaming. In truth, no life is so really practical as that of a saint; and, through the veil of beautiful language, we may discover in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci many duties faithfully performed by her, many lessons of duty faithfully to be performed by ourselves. I would then beg of those young persons to read the following pages with recollection, and, in order to penetrate their true meaning, to enter as much as possible into this young girl's ardent desire of perfection.
I have spoken of the eternal soaring of souls toward God. Have you ever, in the beginning of autumn, watched those flights of birds which, lengthening out in a long train, follow, to the very last, the same sinuosities? 'Tis said that the strongest, flying in advance, cleaves the air; and that the weaker, coming after, enter with ease the aerial furrow. Ah! too feeble that we are to attempt alone the road to heaven, let us at least learn to enter the furrows of the saints. Their strong and certain wing will draw us onward in their track; and when we shall see them so lovely because they were so loving, we shall advance with less fear toward Him who was the supreme object of their love.
Rosa To Gaetano.