not many would survive. In the burning sun, I went, every day, to wait, in the crowd, for letters about him. Often they did not come. I saw blood that had streamed. on the wall where Ossoli was. I have a piece of a bomb that burst close to him. I sought solace in tending the suffering men; but when I beheld the beautiful fair young men bleeding to death, or mutilated for life, I felt the woe of all the mothers who had nursed each to that full flower, to see them thus cut down. I felt the consolation, too, — for those youths died worthily. I was a Mater Dolorosa, and I remembered that she who helped Angelino into the world came from the sign of the Mater Dolorosa. I thought, even if he lives, if he comes into the world at this great troubled time, terrible with perplexed duties, it may be to die thus at twenty years, one of a glorious hecatomb, indeed, but still a sacrifice! It seemed then I was willing he should die.
Angelino’s birth-place is thus sketched:
My baby saw mountains when he first looked forward
into the world. Rieti, — not only an old classic town of
Italy, but one founded by what are now called the
Aborigines, — is a hive of very ancient dwellings with red
brown roofs, a citadel and several towers. It is in a
plain, twelve miles in diameter one way, not much less
the other, and entirely encircled with mountains of the
noblest form. Casinos and hermitages gleam here and
there on their lower slopes. This plain is almost the
richest in Italy, and full of vineyards. Rieti is near the
foot of the hills on one side, and the rapid Velino makes
almost the circuit of its walls, on its way to Terni. I
had my apartment shut out from the family, on the bank
of this river, and saw the mountains, as I lay on my
