Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/219

204 beloved and revered as few were in the ]lilan of that day. She was the friend of Joseph Mazzini, and shared with George Sand and Elizabeth Barrett Browning the honours of prominence in the Liboral movement and aspiration of the time. But it is in her intercourse with the people at large that we shall find the deepest evidence of her true humanity. Hers was no barren creedj divorced from beneficent action. The wounded soldiers in the hospital, the rude peasants of Rieti, knew her heart, and thought of her as "a mild saint and ministering angel," Ferocious and grasping as these peasants were, she was able to overcome for the time their savage instincts, and to turn the tide of their ungoverned passions.

In this place, two brothers were one day saved from the guilt of fratricide by her calm and firm intervention Both of the men were furiously angry, and blood had already been drawn by the knife of one, when she stepped between them, and so reasoned and insisted, that the weapons were presently flung away, and the feud healed by a fraternal embrace. After this occurrence, the American lady was recognised as a peacemaker, and differences of various sons were referred to her for settlement, much as domestic and personal difficulties had been submitted to her in her own New England.

Among the troubles brought under her notice at Rieti were the constant annoyances caused by the lawless behaviour of a number of Spanish troops who happened to be quartered upon the town. Between these and the villagers she succeeded in keeping the peace by means of good counsel and enforced patience.