MARGARET'S MARRIAGE.--CHARACTER OF THE MARCHESE OSSOLI.--MARGARET'S
FIRST MEETING WITH HIM.--REASONS FOR NOT DIVULGING THE
MARRIAGE.--AQUILA.--RIETI.--BIRTH OF ANGELO EUGENE OSSOLI.--MARGARET'S
RETURN TO ROME.--HER ANXIETY ABOUT HER CHILD.--FLIGHT OF POPE PIUS.--THE
CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY.--THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.--ATTITUDE OF FRANCE.--THE
SIEGE OF ROME.--MAZZINI.--PRINCESS BELGIOJOSO.--MARGARET'S CARE OF THE
HOSPITALS.
The story of this summer in the mountains Margaret never told, and her
letters of the previous winter gave no account of matters most personal
to herself. In continuing the narrative of her life, we are therefore
obliged to break through the reserves of the moment, and to speak of
events which, though occurring at this time, were not made known to her
most intimate friends until a much later period.
Margaret had been privately married for some months when she left Rome
for Aquila. Her husband was a young Italian nobleman, Ossoli by name,
whose exterior is thus described by one of her most valued friends[D]:--
"He appeared to be of a reserved and gentle nature, with quiet,
gentlemanlike manners; and there was something melancholy in the
expression of his face which made one desire to know more of him. In
figure he was tall, and of slender frame, with dark hair and eyes. We
judged that he was about thirty years of age, possibly younger."
Margaret had made the acquaintance of this gentleman during her first
visit to Rome, in the spring of the year 1847, and under the following
circumstances: She had gone with some friends to attend the vesper
service at St. Peter's, and, wandering from one point of interest to
another in the vast church, had lost sight of her party. All efforts to
rejoin them proved useless, and Margaret was in some perplexity, when a
young man of gentlemanly address accosted her, and asked leave to assist
her in finding her friends. These had already left the church, and by
the time that this became evident to Margaret and her unknown companion,
the hour was late, and the carriages, which can usually be found in
front of the church after service, had all disappeared. Margaret was
therefore obliged to walk from the Vatican to her lodgings on the
Corso, accompanied by her new friend, with whom she was able at the
time to exchange very little conversation. Familiar as she was with
Italian literature, the sound of the language was new to her, and its
use difficult.
The result of this chance meeting seems to have been love at first sight
on the part of the Marchese Ossoli. Before Margaret left Rome he had
offered her his hand, and had been refused.
Margaret returned to Rome, as we have seen, in the autumn of the same
year. Her acquaintance with the Marchese was now renewed, and with the
advantage that she had become sufficiently familiar with the Italian
language to converse in it with comparative ease. Her intense interest
in the affairs of Italy suggested to him also ideas of "liberty and
better government." His education, much neglected, as she thought, had
been in the traditions of the narrowest conservatism; but Margaret's
influence led or enabled him to free himself from the trammels of
old-time prejudice, and to espouse, with his whole heart, the cause of
Roman liberty.
According to the best authority extant, the marriage of Margaret and the
Marchese took place in the December following her return to Rome. The
father of the Marchese had died but a short time before this, and his
estate, left in the hands of two other sons, was not yet settled. These
gentlemen were both attached to the Papal household, and, we judge, to
the reactionary party. The fear lest the Marchese's marriage with a
Protestant should deprive him wholly, or in part, of his paternal
inheritance, induced the newly married couple to keep to themselves the
secret of their relation to each other. At the moment, ecclesiastical
influence would have been very likely, under such circumstances, to
affect the legal action to be taken in the division of the property.
Better things were hoped for in view of a probable change of government.
So the winter passed, and Margaret went to her retreat among the
mountains, with her secret unguessed and probably unsuspected.
Her husband was a member--perhaps already a captain--of the Civic Guard,
and was detained in Rome by military duties. Margaret was therefore much
alone in the midst of "a theatre of glorious, snow-crowned mountains,
whose pedestals are garlanded with the olive and mulberry, and along
whose sides run bridle-paths fringed with almond groves and vineyards."
The scene was to her one of "intoxicating beauty," but the distance from
her husband soon became more than she could bear. After a month passed
in this place, she found a nearer retreat at Rieti, also a
mountain-town, but within the confines of the Papal States. Here Ossoli
could sometimes pass the Sunday with her, by travelling in the night. In
one of her letters Margaret writes: "Do not fail to come. I shall have
your coffee warm. You will arrive early, and I can see the diligence
pass the bridge from my window."
In the month of August the Civic Guard were ordered to prepare for a
march to Bologna; and Ossoli, writing to Margaret on the 17th, strongly
expresses his unwillingness to be so far removed from her at a time in
which she might have urgent need of his presence at any moment. For
these were to her days of great hope and expectation. Her confinement
was near at hand, and she was alone, poor and friendless, among people
whose only aim was to plunder her. But Margaret could not, even in these
trying circumstances, belie the heroic principles which had always
guided her life. She writes to her doubting, almost despairing husband:
"If honor requires it, go. I will try to sustain myself."
This dreaded trial was averted. The march to Bologna was countermanded.
Margaret's boy saw the light on the 5th of September, and the joyful
presence of her husband soothed for her the pangs of a first maternity.
He was indeed obliged to leave her the next day for Rome. Margaret was
ill cared for, and lost, through a severe fever, the ability to nurse
her child. She was forced to dismiss her only attendant, and to struggle
in her helpless condition with the dishonesty and meanness of the people
around her. A _balia_[E] for the child was soon found, but Margaret felt
the need of much courage in guarding the first days of her infant's
life. In her eyes he grew "more beautiful every hour." The people in the
house called him Angiolino, anticipating the name afterwards given him
in baptism,--Angelo Eugene.
She was soon to find a new trial in leaving him. Her husband still
wished to keep his marriage a profound secret, and to this end desired
that the baby should be left at Rieti, in charge of "a good nurse who
should treat him like a mother." Margaret was most anxious to return to
Rome, to be near her husband, and also in order to be able to carry on
the literary labor upon which depended not only her own support, but
also that of her child.
Writing to Ossoli, she says: "I cannot stay long without seeing the boy.
He is so dear, and life seems so uncertain. It is necessary that I
should be in Rome a month at least, to write, and to be near you. But I
must be free to return here, if I feel too anxious and suffering for
him."
Early in November Margaret returned to Rome. In a letter to her mother,
bearing the date of November 16, she says:--
"I am again in Rome, situated for the first time entirely to my mind....
I have the sun all day, and an excellent chimney. It [her lodging] is
very high, and has pure air, and the most beautiful view all around
imaginable.... The house looks out on the Piazza Barberini, and I see
both that palace and the Pope's [the Quirinal]."
The assassination of the Minister Rossi had taken place on the previous
day. Margaret describes it almost as if she had seen it:--
"The poor, weak Pope has fallen more and more under the dominion of the
cardinals. He had suffered the Minister Rossi to go on, tightening the
reins, and because the people preserved a sullen silence, he thought
they would bear it.... Rossi, after two or three most unpopular
measures, had the imprudence to call the troops of the line to defend
him, instead of the National Guard.... Yesterday, as he descended from
his carriage to enter the Chamber [of Deputies], the crowd howled and
hissed, then pushed him, and as he turned his head in consequence, a
sure hand stabbed him in the back."
On the morrow, the troops and the people united in calling upon the
Pope, then at the Quirinal, for a change of measures. They found no
audience, but only the hated Swiss mercenaries, who defeated an attempt
to enter the palace by firing on the crowd. "The drum beat to call out
the National Guard. The carriage of Prince Barberini has returned, with
its frightened inmates and liveried retinue, and they have suddenly
barred up the court-yard gate." Margaret felt no apprehension for
herself in all this turmoil. The side which had, for the moment, the
upper hand, was her own, and these very days were such as she had longed
for, not, we may be sure, for their accompaniments of bloodshed and
violence, but for the outlook which was to her and her friends one of
absolute promise.
The "good time coming" did then seem to have come for Italy. Her various
populations had risen against their respective tyrants, and had shown a
disposition to forget past divisions in the joy of a country reconciled
and united.
In the principal churches of Rome, masses were performed in
commemoration of the patriotic men who fell at this time in various
struggles with existing governments. Thus were honored the "victims" of
Milan, of Naples, of Venice, of Vienna.
Not long after the assassination of Rossi, the Pope, imploring the
protection of the King of Naples, fled to Gaeta.
"No more of him," writes Margaret; "his day is over. He has been made,
it seems unconsciously, an instrument of good which his regrets cannot
destroy."
The political consequences of this act were scarcely foreseen by the
Romans, who, according to Margaret's account, remained quite cool and
composed, saying only: "The Pope, the cardinals, the princes are gone,
and Rome is perfectly tranquil. One does not miss anything, except that
there are not so many rich carriages and liveries."
In February Margaret chronicles the opening of the Constitutional
Assembly, which was heralded by a fine procession, with much display of
banners. In this, Prince Canino, a nephew of Napoleon, walked side by
side with Garibaldi, both having been chosen deputies. Margaret saw this
from a balcony in the Piazza di Venezia, whose stern old palace "seemed
to frown, as the bands each, in passing, struck up the _Marseillaise_."
On February 9th the bells were rung in honor of the formation of a Roman
Republic. The next day Margaret went forth early, to observe the face of
Rome. She saw the procession of deputies mount the Campidoglio
(Capitol), with the Guardia Civica for their escort. Here was
promulgated the decree announcing the formation of the Republic, and
guaranteeing to the Pope the undisturbed exercise of his spiritual
power.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany now fled, smiling assent to liberal principles
as he entered his carriage to depart. The King of Sardinia was naturally
filled with alarm. "It makes no difference," says Margaret. "He and his
minister, Gioberti, must go, unless foreign intervention should impede
the liberal movement. In this case, the question is, what will France
do? Will she basely forfeit every pledge and every duty, to say nothing
of her true interest?" Alas! France was already sold to the counterfeit
greatness of a name, and was pledged to a course irrational and vulgar
beyond any that she had yet followed. The Roman Republic, born of high
hope and courage, had but few days to live, and those days were full of
woe.
Margaret had so made the life of Rome her own at this period, that we
have found it impossible to describe the one without recounting
something of the other. Her intense interest in public affairs could
not, however, wean her thoughts from the little babe left at Rieti.
Going thither in December, she passed a week with her darling, but was
forced after this to remain three months in Rome without seeing him.
Here she lay awake whole nights, contriving how she might end this
painful separation; but circumstances were too strong for her, and the
object so dearly wished for could not be compassed.
In March she visited him again, and found him in health, "and plump,
though small." The baby leaned his head pathetically against her breast,
seeming, she thought, to say, "How could you leave me?" He is described
as a sensitive and precocious little creature,--affected, Margaret
thought, by sympathy with her; "for," she says, "I worked very hard
before his birth [at her book on Italy], with the hope that all my
spirit might be incarnated in him."
She returned to Rome about the middle of April. The French were already
in Italy. Their "web of falsehood" was drawing closer and closer round
the devoted city. Margaret was not able to visit her boy again until the
siege, soon begun, ended in the downfall of the Roman Republic.
The government of Rome, at this time, was in the hands of a triumvirate,
whose names--Armellini, Mazzini, and Saffi--are appended to the official
communications made in answer to the letters of the French Envoy, M. de
Lesseps, and of the Commander-in-Chief, General Oudinot. The French side
of this correspondence presented but a series of tergiversations, the
truth being simply that the opportunity of reinstating the Roman Pontiff
in his temporal domain was too valuable to be allowed to pass, by the
adventurer who then, under the name of President, already ruled France
by military despotism. In the great game of hazard which he played, the
prospective adhesion of the Pope's spiritual subjects was the highest
card he could hold. The people who had been ignorant enough to elect
Louis Napoleon, were easily led to justify his outrageous expedition to
Rome.
In Margaret's manifold disappointments, Mazzini always remained her
ideal of a patriot, and, as she says, of a prince. To her, he stands
alone in Italy, "on a sunny height, far above the stature of other men."
He came to her lodgings in Rome, and was in appearance "more divine than
ever, after all his new, strange sufferings." He had then just been made
a Roman citizen, and would in all probability have been made President,
had the Republic continued to exist. He talked long with Margaret, and,
she says, was not sanguine as to the outcome of the difficulties of the
moment.
The city once invested, military hospitals became a necessity. The
Princess Belgiojoso, a Milanese by birth, and in her day a social and
political notability, undertook to organize these establishments, and
obtained, by personal solicitation, the funds necessary to begin her
work. On the 30th of April, 1849, she wrote the following letter to
Margaret:--
"DEAR MISS FULLER,--You are named Superintendent of the Hospital of
the _Fate Bene Fratelli_. Go there at twelve, if the alarm-bell has
not rung before. When you arrive there, you will receive all the
women coming for the wounded, and give them your directions, so
that you are sure to have a number of them, night and day.
"May God help us!
"CHRISTINE TRIVULZE, OF BELGIOJOSO."