_Rieti, Aug_. 28, 1849.--You say, you are glad I have had this great
opportunity for carrying out my principles. Would it were so! I found
myself inferior in courage and fortitude to the occasion. I knew not
how to bear the havoc and anguish incident to the struggle for these
principles. I rejoiced that it lay not with me to cut down the trees,
to destroy the Elysian gardens, for the defence of Rome; I do not know
that I could have done it. And the sight of these far nobler growths,
the beautiful young men, mown down in their stately prime, became too
much for me. I forget the great ideas, to sympathize with the poor
mothers, who had nursed their precious forms, only to see them
all lopped and gashed. You say, I sustained them; often have they
sustained my courage: one, kissing the pieces of bone that were so
painfully extracted from his arm, hanging them round his neck to be
worn as the true relics of to-day; mementoes that he also had done and
borne something for his country and the hopes of humanity. One fair
young man, who is made a cripple for life, clasped my hand as he saw
me crying over the spasms I could not relieve, and faintly cried,
"Viva l'Italia." "Think only, _cara bona donna_" said a poor wounded
soldier, "that I can always wear my uniform on _festas_, just as it is
now, with the holes where the balls went through, for a memory." "God
is good; God knows," they often said to me, when I had not a word to
cheer them.