Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/246

238 a man is despised. All the people compare him with Pius VII. saying to the French, “Slay me if you will; I cannot yield,” and feel the difference.

I was on Monte Cavallo yesterday. The common people were staying at the broken windows and burnt door of the palace where they have so often gone to receive a blessing, the children playing, “Sedia Papale. Morte ai Cardinali, e morte al Papa!”

The men of straw are going down in Italy everywhere; the real men rising into power. Montanelli, Guerazzi, Mazzini, are real men; their influence is of character. Had we only been born a little later! Mazzini has returned from his seventeen years’ exile, “to see what he foresaw.” He has a mind far in advance of his times, and yet Mazzini sees not all.

Rome, May 7, 1848. — Good and loving hearts will be unprepared, and for a time must suffer much from the final dereliction of Pius IX. to the cause of freedom. After the revolution opened in Lombardy, the troops of the line were sent thither; the volunteers rushed to accompany them, the priests preached the war as a crusade, the Pope blessed the banners. The report that the Austrians had taken and hung as a brigand one of the Roman Civic Guard, — a well-known artist engaged in the war of Lombardy, — roused the people; and they went to the Pope, to demand that he should declare war against the Austrians. The Pope summoned a consistory, and then declared in his speech that he had only intended local reforms; that he regretted the misuse that had been made of his name; and wound up by lamenting the war as offensive to the spirit of religion. A momentary stupefaction, followed by a passion of indig-