"My beloved son is dead—died for his God. Oh what a comfort is that thought amid this desolation! He fell like the brave, defending the Church and our venerated Pontiff. Was it not a signal favour granted to him by that Lord who is so good that He put it into his heart to shed every drop of his blood for Him, and by this very means to bring him to paradise, where Urban henceforth—yes, I dare believe it—enjoys the vision of his God, and is beatified for all eternity, with beatitude unmixed?" [Thus it was plain that having fallen in battle he had, as the writer of the story says, "seized the palm of martyrdom, as he, following St. Louis, called it," and so had escaped the pains of purgatory.] "If," continues the mother to her friend, "you go to a reception of our holy and venerated Pontiff and King, assure him, I pray you, that I am happy that my son has shed his blood for him."
When the body arrived at Quimper, two hundred priests and a crowd uncounted from the surrounding Breton villages came, "rather to venerate than to pray for the departed." The houses were draped in black, the black was decked with the French and the Papal flags; on the coffin lay his sword, twined with laurels and crowned with vermilion. The bishop pronounced the panegyric "magnifying him as a martyr for religion." Mrs. Stone, a volunteer sister of charity, went from Rome to Nerola to visit the wounded prisoners in the hands of the Garibaldians, and especially Alfred Collingridge. The dying crusader said, "The Lord has given me the favour I asked—to die for the Holy Father. Oh, yes, may God accept of my death and my blood for the triumph of Holy Church and for the conversion of England!" He complained that his rosary had been taken away, and Mrs. Stone supplied him with her own. Alfred Collingridge, from Oxford, "was the first of the English who laid down his life in the Crusade of St. Peter." The writer prays, "May this first English blood shed on Roman soil rise up before God, and descend again in a dew of mercy on the land of Britain!" Of Alfred's countrymen were present, his own brother George, two Watts-Russells, David Shee, and Oswald Cary, "all soldiers of St. Peter" (VII. v. 155 ff.). The father hearing from George of the death of Alfred, had only one regret, that he could not himself step into his vacant place.
When Arthur Guillemin fell he was unhappily consigned to a grave in common with Garibaldians; because it "was not then possible to separate in the grave the friends of God from His enemies." Six months later, Fathers Wilde and Gerlache, with others, piously sought the body of the martyr to restore it to his native Aire-sur-la-Lys, by express desire of Pius IX. Canon Druot had come to Rome to claim it in the name of the family, the country, and the Church of Guillemin's birth. The seekers of the relic included an O'Reilly, a Le Dieu, a Bach, a Loonen, and a Mimmi. "You will find him," said a peasant, "with a Garibaldian at his feet." The first object recognized was a Carmelite scapular. "It is like mine," cried an officer; "two both alike were given to him and me by the Countess Macchi!" Soon was seen the end of the cord of St. Francis, worn by the deceased in imitation of St. Louis of France. As the corpse was borne off to Rome, the people pressed around and cried Evviva!—Long life to him! This cry "strange around a bier," expressed a "profound sense of the marvellous," and threw "a glittering light upon the idea formed by Christians of those who fall fighting in the modern crusade." At Rome, in the great Church of St. Louis of France, the bier was surrounded by ambassadors, prelates, and officers, including the Minister of War. At home, the "precious deposit" was received in an illuminated chapel, decorated, not with symbols of death, but of glory. "The crowd of pilgrims from the whole of northern France" thronged the town. The bier was adorned with symbols of victory, the work of Roman artists. The coffin was borne by the youth of the town, emulous by changes to come under the coveted burden. A party of pontifical zouaves in uniform attended. From the corners of the hearse rose trophies of the pontifical flag "garlanded with triumphal laurel." While yet the corpse lay in the illuminated chapel, a new-born nephew of Arthur was borne in by the mother, who "piously laid him upon the coffin, as used the ancient Christians to lay their little ones on the sepulchres of the martyrs. A thrill of reverence went through the assembly." During the funeral procession, the eyes of the multitude "were fixed with devout curiosity on a piece of his uniform spread out upon the bier, in which was seen the rent made by the wound" (VII. iv. 415).
Aire-sur-la-Lys is not very far from our own shores, beyond Calais.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] Cecconi, p. 62.
[96] An interesting account of this change is given in Sepp's stirring speech in the Bavarian Parliament on the Mering case, Deutschland und der Vatican, pp. 182-85.
[97] VII. iii. 559.