Unwearied by labors, animated by a single passion—the love of country—men like him “becoming the heroes and benefactors of the human race, attain to the glory of immortality.” The national historian, in a future age, will date the rehabilitation of Ireland from the birth of O’Connell.
ULTRAISM.
To be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the altar; it is to maltreat the thing you support; it is to kick in the traces; it is to cavil at the stake for undercooking heretics; it is to reproach the idol with a lack of idolatry; it is to insult by an excess of respect; it is to find in the Pope too little papistry, in the king too little royalty, and too much light in the night; it is to be dissatisfied with the albatross, with snow, with the swan, and the lily, in the name of whiteness; it is to be the partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so very pro that you are con.—Victor Hugo.
MARIA IMMACOLATA OF BOURBON.[156]
We still see her, a gentle and beautiful girl of fourteen, seated beside her brother, the exiled King of Naples, in a low carriage which passes through the Villa Borghese, in Rome. Her face is of the Bourbon mould. A fair, open forehead, doubly suggestive of the water-lily, because of its snowy whiteness and the innocent frankness with which it seems to turn towards heaven. Bright hazel eyes, the limpid, loving depths of which are expressive of the innocence and purity of the soul, which gives them life and light; while the lines of her chaste mouth and finely-chiselled chin are ever forming themselves into a subdued smile of love, of peace, and of quiet resignation. There is a modesty, and withal an elegance in her dress and carriage, which strike the beholder at once. Her eyes do not wander about, but are fixed with trusting tenderness on the face of her brother, or rest affectionately upon the beautiful greyhound which crouches at her feet and looks up at her with an earnestness almost human. It may have been a mere fancy of ours, founded on our knowledge of the history of that lovely creature; but it always seemed to us that the earnest look of the dog at its young mistress was one of pity as well as of affection—pity because she was an exiled princess; affection, because she was fair to behold and gentle in demeanor, and the life-giving spirit of both qualities was a pure and noble soul, which we have since learned to regard with a veneration not unlike that which we bear towards a saint. We do not purpose to write her biography, nor even her memoirs. We will merely sketch briefly, and in the simplicity with which they were narrated to us, some recollections of that short life of nineteen years which wrought a chastening and ennobling influence upon all whose happiness it was to be near her.
Maria Immacolata Aloysia of Bourbon was the youngest child but one of Ferdinand II., King of Naples, and Maria Theresa of Austria, his second wife, and was born in the castle of Caserta, on the 21st of January, 1855. Her father the king died when she was quite young, and was succeeded on the throne by Francis II., the first-born of his marriage with the saintly Maria Christina of Savoy. After the death of Ferdinand, the Queen-Mother, Maria Theresa, devoted all her energies to the religious and secular education of her four children, the Princess Maria Pia; Prince Don Pasquale, Count of Bari; the subject of this sketch, Princess Maria Immacolata, and Prince Don Gennarino, Count of Caltagirone. In doing this she was actuated by a strong sense of the obligations of a Christian mother towards her children, while she felt that in discharging these obligations with fidelity she paid a worthy tribute to the memory of her deceased consort. Maria Immacolata, even in childhood, showed herself worthy of the sweet name which was given her in baptism, and the name of Aloysia was peculiarly becoming to her; for as S. Aloysius was called “the Angel of the Court of Mantua,” so did her sweet and angelic disposition win for her the appellation of “Angel of the Court of Naples.” Naples, however, was not destined to possess its “angel” long. The sad history of the treacherous expulsion of Francis II. by his own first cousin, Victor Emanuel, is too well known to need recital here. Enough to say, that in 1861 the Bourbons were forced to fly from the fortress of Gaeta and seek refuge in Rome, which was still the home of the exile, the weary, and the world-worn. As their father Ferdinand had offered an asylum to Pius IX. when the revolution of 1848 drove him from Rome, so now the noble heart of the Pontiff sympathized with the exiles, and he forthwith ordered the Quirinal Palace to be prepared for their reception. King Francis soon after took up his residence in the Farnese Palace, and the Queen-Mother retired with her four children to Palazzo Nipoti. It is into this sanctuary of piety, order, and industry that we would introduce the reader, that he may admire with us the domestic virtues of that Christian mother Maria Theresa. All is order, tranquillity, and modesty. Each prince has his own separate apartment and his own instructors. The hours for retiring to bed at night, rising in the morning, for prayers, Mass, study, meals, and recreation are regularly established. Besides the ordinary exercises of piety, there is a religious instruction given once a week, and a spiritual retreat once a year, at which the queen herself and every member of her household assist. She is the ruling and guiding spirit of all, and it was but natural, under the influence of such a perfect model, that the children should soon give evidences of those rare qualities of mind and soul which, in later years, became the theme of general admiration. Such was the domestic life of the exiles. It was here that the character of Maria Immacolata began to develop itself with singular beauty. Naturally pious, she loved God tenderly. At the religious instructions she observed a gravity of demeanor rarely met with in a child of her years, and on retiring to her room, she used to note down upon a slip of paper the principal points in the discourse which she had just heard. Her temperament was a lively one, and no one enjoyed the hours of recreation more heartily than she did. Yet it was apparent to all as she grew up that she was struggling hard to obtain a perfect mastery over herself, and the success which attended her efforts was especially manifest in her affectionate obedience to the queen, to her elder brothers and sister. The sweetest little nook in the Nipoti Palace was the room of Maria Immacolata. It was so small, so neat, so orderly, and the little altar in one corner, surmounted by a statuette of the Immaculate Conception, and ornamented with sweet-smelling flowers, told more plainly than words could who was the occupant. During the month of May her room became a little Eden of flowers in honor of the Virgin Mary. But other flowers were offered up to Our Lady which were far more acceptable to her than the fairest flowers of earth. On the altar stood a little vase of porphyry, containing a number of slips of paper, upon which was written the name of some virtue, some act of charity to be performed, or little mortification to be practised. Every morning, she and her sister, Maria Pia, repaired together to this urn, and, with joy depicted in their countenances, each drew out a slip of paper. Immacolata was always wont to say, when she had read her slip of paper, “O mamma! I need this virtue so much.” It has been said that love is ingenious; and if this be true of that love which creatures, following a God-given instinct, bear one towards another, it must find a proportionately more beautiful application in the love which a pure creature of the earth cherishes for the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Maria Immacolata and her sister were not content with practising daily the virtues named on each slip of paper, but on the last day of the month they collected all the slips of paper together, and, with the addition of some lilies, they wove them into a chaplet, with which they crowned the statue of their Queen. The idea had a doubly beautiful significance, being suggestive at once of purity of heart and the traditional love of the Bourbons for the lily. The young princess was scarcely eleven years of age when she was told, to her unutterable delight, that she might prepare to receive her First Communion. In this event of her life our admiration is divided between the solicitous care of her noble mother in preparing her daughter for a worthy reception of the Blessed Eucharist, and the holy readiness and thorough spirit of appreciation with which the child performed all that was enjoined upon her. In order to remove every possible occasion of distraction during the spiritual retreat of eight days, which she made in the palace under the direction of a Jesuit father, she sent all her toys to a conservatory of little girls, and on the day previous to her beginning the exercises, she was overheard to say to a parrot, of which she was very fond, “Bird, you and I must part for awhile; a great Visitor is coming, and I must prepare to receive him.” She went so far as to deny herself the cup of chicken-broth which she was in the habit of taking in the morning, because of her delicate constitution. During the retreat she prayed most fervently to S. Aloysius, to whom she was tenderly devoted, beseeching him to obtain for her the grace of overcoming the enemies of her soul—the world, the passions, and the demon. After her death, a slip of paper was found in her prayer-book, upon which she had noted down all that she intended to ask our Lord for at her First Communion. She seems to have been strongly attached to her governess, for she writes: “and I will pray for Maria Laserre, that she may never be separated from me; and I will also pray,” said the child, “for Victor Emanuel, that God may enlighten him and pardon him all the harm he has done to us.” The first prayer received a gracious hearing, and we find Maria Laserre her constant and cheerful companion in all the trials and vicissitudes to which that short and guileless life was afterward subject. The other prayer reveals a sensitive soul, which was penetrated to its depths with a full and saddening consciousness of the monstrous wrongs which her family had suffered from their disloyal cousin, and at the same time a generous, forgiving spirit, not unlike that which prompted the touching prayer of Christ upon the cross, “Father! forgive them.” Many a noble deed is recorded of the Bourbons when they were in power, when the fleur-de-lis was the emblem of a glorious reality; but there is a sublimity of pathos in the forgiving prayer of the delicate child of eleven, despoiled of every vestige of royalty but her princely name, which is far beyond our appreciation, and is only justly estimated by Him who taught us to forgive the trespasses of others if we would hope for the forgiveness of our own. For all the favors which she asked of S. Aloysius she promised to give him a clasp of diamonds, which she had received from the king her father. Her anxiety, however, was great lest her mother might not consent to her parting with such a precious souvenir, as will appear in the letters which she wrote to the saint during the retreat, and which were found after her death in a small silver purse which she carried about with her. They are written in elegant French. As they were never intended for mortal eyes, but were addressed in all innocence and simplicity to a saint in heaven, we take them up with all possible delicacy, and reverence for the chaste heart of which they were the candid outpouring. While they bear testimony to her purity of soul, they are also an evidence of what religion was to her—not a hard, galling yoke, which must be borne from sheer necessity, nor a heavy burden, to be carried only on a Sunday or a holyday. No, there was an every-day warmth in her religion; it was something near at hand, familiar, consoling, and refreshing, and nowhere more perfectly embodied than in the short definition of the Redeemer: “My yoke is sweet, and my burden light.” Here is one of her letters:
“O great saint! who never lost your innocence, and who by your sanctity brought so much glory and honor upon your mother; S. Aloysius Gonzaga, patron of the young, you who were possessed of a great knowledge of the world and of human frailty, I recommend myself to you, that, by your intercession with Jesus Christ our Lord, you obtain for me the grace that I too may make a good First Communion. S. Aloysius Gonzaga! you who knew so well how to make a First Communion, oh! grant that the First Communion may be for me the beginning of a new life, the rule and guide of all my actions; and that I too may begin to battle courageously with the world, the demon, and my own passions. Grant me this favor, O great Saint! Meanwhile, I choose thee for my protector, and I will recommend myself to thee every day, in every sorrowful trial, at every suggestion of the enemy, and in every instance of impatience; and when temptation assails me, I will say a Gloria Patri for thee.