I do not know the places you speak of, unless you mean Romito and Antignano. I went as far as La Torre on foot, one beautiful August morning, without suffering much from the heat, which was tempered by the sea-breeze. After having traversed that long, steep road, which becomes at every step more solitary and more closely shut in between the hills and the sea, I went up to the top of the little fortress, and thence for a long time I gazed on the neighboring islands and the vast horizon where sea and sky seemed to unite, and I even discerned some of the lands of the Maremma. Another time, with the Plezza, the Gabrini, and other friends, we went as far as Romito. The sun had already sunk below the horizon. Every moment the last glimmering of twilight was becoming more faint, and soon the moon rose behind the hills. Her pale rays were reflected in the sea, where nothing was seen save a solitary fishing-boat; and the gentle murmur of the waves, as they came slowly to die on the rocky shore, was the only sound that broke the stillness of the night. We crossed from time to time the dry bed of one of those torrents which fall from the mountains into the sea; and thus, now talking, now silent, gazing, admiring, we passed the two little towers, and, arrived at the limits of the two communes, we stopped and turned back, as if we had reached the Columns of Hercules, There is a comparison that would please my good friend Louisa V——. Would you believe it, in her last letter she gravely compares me to a navigator steering toward a new world. "Yet no," she says, "love is a world as old as the earth." That may be, my good Louisa; but to me it is new, all new, Gaetano, and I believe, even, that it will never grow old, like everything that comes directly from God, who is endless duration in eternal youth! On this is grounded my sure hope that, after having united us here on earth, he will unite us again in the life to come; and this thought alone raises me from earth to heaven!
This was not the first time that Rosa had visited Antignano. That calm and lovely shore had witnessed the sports of her childhood. Three or four years before the date of the last letter we have given, she wrote from that place to one of her young friends the following pretty letter:
Antignano, July, 1853.
In spite of our joy at being here, believe me, my dear Maria, we feel your absence sadly. It turns to melancholy the joyous memories of last year. This is from my heart, Maria; how happy I should be to have you at this moment by my side! Come back to us then, dear friend, come back! The little wood where we spent so many happy hours, the great shady trees, the smiling country, and the sea—all call you back. Why, it is but two days since I heard a wave which came bounding over the sea say to you, "Come down, young girl, from the flowery bank into this calm sea, and yield to the invitation of the sun, who with his brilliant rays is brightening air and earth and water." But this pretty song of the naiad was suddenly interrupted, for my poor wave broke and expired on a rock. All its sister wavelets murmured the same prayer to you, but all, like the first, soon broke upon the shore; and I grew pensive at the sight, for those poor waves, vanishing so quickly, seemed to me a true image of our shattered hopes, which cause us so many tears. Meanwhile a little interior voice remained with me, and murmured sweetly in my ear, "Courage, courage! Why are you sad? Cannot Maria come back? I am your good friend Hope, listen to me and believe me: I promise you that next year Maria shall be here." This consoled me a little, for I always believe what my good friend Hope tells me. Courage, then, and patience, and I am sure of having you yet at Antignano. Dear Maria, pardon this letter, which is as long as it is foolish, and, if you do not understand it, seek in it only a new proof of my tender affection for you. Meanwhile, let us leave the world of dreams and enter that of news. ...
To Gaetano.
July 28.
This day brings to us a mournful anniversary. Poor Charles Albert! on this day, and at the very hour in which I write, he yielded up to God his soul, oppressed with grief, but still full of an unshaken confidence in the justice of his cause and the imprescriptibility of his rights. Doubtless the saints have welcomed into heaven him who on earth loved God and suffered for justice' sake. It is with feelings of compassion that I think of the king, his son, surviving all his family, who have, one after the other, gone before him to the grave.
This enthusiastic remembrance of the house of Savoy is not the only one to be found in the letters of Rosa Ferrucci. The misfortunes of the king, Charles Albert; the death of the Duke of Genoa, his son; the ruin of so many hopes, for a moment triumphant—all these often call forth in her correspondence plaints and regrets. I like to see this love of national independence in so pure a soul. She says somewhere:
"In considering the history of nations, we discover at every step new and infallible proofs of the wisdom and omnipotence of him who directs the affairs of the world; of that mysterious justice which surpasses all human understanding as the heavens surpass the earth. Hope, then, in the Lord, ye victims of oppression! Acknowledge the hand which alone can give you deliverance! And you, usurpers of the rights of the vanquished, triumph not without trembling at the tears which you have caused to flow. He lives, he will live for ever, who will never remain deaf to the lamentations of his people Israel. If he defers his justice, are you to cease to believe in him? Because he can wait, will your presumption know no bounds? Do you forget that God is patient because he is eternal?" [Footnote 157]