“To get to the child, or to send to him, was quite impossible, and for days they were in complete ignorance about him.  At length, a letter came; and in it the nurse declared that unless they should immediately send her, in advance-payment, a certain sum of money, she would altogether abandon Angelo.  It seemed, at first, impossible to forward the money, the road was so insecure, and the bearer of any parcel was so likely to be seized by one party or the other, and to be treated as a spy.  But finally, after much consideration, the sum was sent to the address of a physician, who had been charged with the care of the child.  I think it did reach its destination, and for a while answered the purpose of keeping the wretched woman faithful to her charge.”

AQUILA AND RIETI.

Extracts from Margaret’s and Ossoli’s letters will guide us more into the heart of this home-tragedy, so sanctified with holy hope, sweet love, and patient heroism.  They shall be introduced by a passage from a journal written many years before.

“My Child!  O, Father, give me a bud on my tree of life, so scathed by the lightning and bound by the frost!  Surely a being born wholly of my being, would not let me lie so still and cold in lonely sadness.  This is a new sorrow; for always, before, I have wanted a superior or equal, but now it seems that only the feeling of a parent for a child could exhaust the richness of one’s soul.  All powerful Nature, how dost thou lead me into thy heart and rebuke every factitious feeling, every thought of pride, which has severed me from the Universe!  How did I aspire to be a pure flame, ever pointing upward on the altar!  But these thoughts of consecration, though true to the time, are false to the whole.  There needs no consecration to the wise heart for all is pervaded by One Spirit, and the Soul of all existence is the Holy of Holies.  I thought ages would pass, before I had this parent feeling, and then, that the desire would rise from my fulness of being.  But now it springs up in my poverty and sadness.  I am well aware that I ought not to be so happy.  I do not deserve to be well beloved in any way, far less as the mother by her child.  I am too rough and blurred an image of the Creator, to become a bestower of life.  Yet, if I refuse to be anything else than my highest self, the true beauty will finally glow out in fulness.”

At what cost, were bought the blessings so long pined for!  Early in the summer of 1848, Margaret left Rome for Aquila, a small, old town, once a baronial residence, perched among the mountains of Abruzzi.  She thus sketches her retreat:—­