In Paris, Margaret attended the Academy lectures, saw much of George Sand, waded through melting snow at Avignon to see Laura’s tomb, and at last was in Italy, the country she had longed to see.  Here Mrs. Jameson, Powers, and Greenough, and the Brownings and Storys, were her warm friends.  Here she settled down to systematic work, trying to keep her expenses for six months within four hundred dollars.  Still, when most cramped for means herself, she was always generous.  Once, when living on a mere pittance, she loaned fifty dollars to a needy artist.  In New York she gave an impecunious author five hundred dollars to publish his book, and, of course, never received a dollar in return.  Yet the race for life was wearing her out.  So tired was she that she said, “I should like to go to sleep, and be born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely taxed.”

Meantime the struggle for Italian unity was coming to its climax.  Mazzini and his followers were eager for a republic.  Pius IX. had given promises to the Liberal party, but afterwards abandoned it, and fled to Gaeta.  Then Mazzini turned for help to the President of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, who, in his heart, had no love for republics, but sent an army to reinstate the Pope.  Rome, when she found herself betrayed, fought like a tiger.  Men issued from the workshops with their tools for weapons, while women from the housetops urged them on.  One night over one hundred and fifty bombs were thrown into the heart of the city.

Margaret was the friend of Mazzini, and enthusiastic for Roman liberty.  All those dreadful months she ministered to the wounded and dying in the hospitals, and was their “saint,” as they called her.

But there was another reason why Margaret Fuller loved Italy.

Soon after her arrival in Rome, as she was attending vespers at St. Peter’s with a party of friends, she became separated from them.  Failing to find them, seeing her anxious face, a young Italian came up to her, and politely offered to assist her.  Unable to regain her friends, Angelo Ossoli walked with her to her home, though he could speak no English, and she almost no Italian.  She learned afterward that he was of a noble and refined family; that his brothers were in the Papal army, and that he was highly respected.

After this he saw Margaret once or twice, when she left Rome for some months.  On her return, he renewed the acquaintance, shy and quiet though he was, for her influence seemed great over him.  His father, the Marquis Ossoli, had just died, and Margaret, with her large heart, sympathized with him, as she alone knew how to sympathize.  He joined the Liberals, thus separating himself from his family, and was made a captain of the Civic Guard.