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Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli)

<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3> <h5>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.</h5> 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[233] 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,[234] 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[235] 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[236] 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,[237] 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."[238] 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,[239] 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.[240] "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[241] 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[242] 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[243] 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[244] 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." [245] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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