_Rome, July_ 8, 1849.--I do not yet find myself tranquil and recruited
from the painful excitements of these last days. But, amid the ruined
hopes of Rome, the shameful oppressions she is beginning to suffer,
amid these noble, bleeding martyrs, my brothers, I cannot fix my
thoughts on anything else.
I write that you may assure mother of my safety, which in the last
days began to be seriously imperilled. Say, that as soon as I can find
means of conveyance, without an expense too enormous, I shall go again
into the mountains. There I shall find pure, bracing air, and I hope
stillness, for a time. Say, she need feel no anxiety, if she do not
hear from me for some time. I may feel indisposed to write, as I do
now; my heart is too full.
Private hopes of mine are fallen with the hopes of Italy. I have
played for a new stake, and lost it. Life looks too difficult. But
for the present I shall try to wave all thought of self and renew my
strength.
After the attempt at revolution in France failed, could I have
influenced Mazzini, I should have prayed him to capitulate, and yet I
feel that no honorable terms can be made with such a foe, and that the
only way is _never_ to yield; but the sound of the musketry, the sense
that men were perishing in a hopeless contest, had become too terrible
for my nerves. I did not see Mazzini, the last two weeks of the
republic. When the French entered, he walked about the streets, to
see how the people bore themselves, and then went to the house of
a friend. In the upper chamber of a poor house, with his life-long
friends,--the Modenas,--I found him. Modena, who abandoned not only
what other men hold dear,--home, fortune, peace,--but also endured,
without the power of using the prime of his great artist-talent, a
ten years' exile in a foreign land; his wife every way worthy of
him,--such a woman as I am not.
Mazzini had suffered millions more than I could; he had borne his
fearful responsibility; he had let his dearest friends perish; he had
passed all these nights without sleep; in two short months, he had
grown old; all the vital juices seemed exhausted; his eyes were all
blood-shot; his skin orange; flesh he had none; his hair was mixed
with white: his hand was painful to the touch; but he had never
flinched, never quailed; had protested in the last hour against
surrender; sweet and calm, but full of a more fiery purpose than ever;
in him I revered the hero, and owned myself not of that mould.
You say truly, I shall come home humbler. God grant it may be entirely
humble! In future, while more than ever deeply penetrated with
principles, and the need of the martyr spirit to sustain them, I will
ever own that there are few worthy, and that I am one of the least.
A silken glove might be as good a gauntlet as one of steel, but I,
infirm of mood, turn sick even now as I think of the past.
* * * * *
_July_, 1849.--I cannot tell you what I endured in leaving Rome;
abandoning the wounded soldiers; knowing that there is no provision
made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been
thrown by a noble courage, where they have suffered with a noble
patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right
arm,--one having lost both the right arm and the right leg,--I could
have provided for with a small sum. Could I have sold my hair, or
blood from my arm, I would have done it. Had any of the rich Americans
remained in Rome, they would have given it to me; they helped nobly at
first, in the service of the hospitals, when there was far less need;
but they had all gone. What would I have given that I could have
spoken to one of the Lawrences, or the Phillipses; they could and
would have saved the misery. These poor men are left helpless in
the power of a mean and vindictive foe. You felt so oppressed in the
slave-states; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all
the genius of this dear land, again enslaved.