Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
So passed eight years of adventure by land and sea, in wood and vale,
on mountain and plain. Garibaldi had given Brazil all the freedom she
deserved--all she knew how to use. He was crowned as "The Hero of
Montevideo," and could have taken a place high in the councils of the
State. But across the sea he heard the rumble of battle going on in
his beloved fatherland, and the dream of a United Italy was still
vivid in his mind, and of course, vivid, too, in the mind of Anita. So
they sailed away, taking with them a hundred of their loyal, loving
men in the red shirts, who refused to be left behind. Arriving in
Italy, Garibaldi went at once to the home of his mother, who had
mourned him as lost and now received him as one risen from the dead.
Anita and the children appealed to the good woman, and her heart went
out to them, as if, indeed, they were all her own, loved into life.
When all at once, remembering her son's indifference for the Church,
she asked when and where they were married, Joseph looked at Anita,
and Anita looked at Joseph, and then they acknowledged that they had
only been married by a sailor, who had said the ceremony as he
remembered it, adding, "And may God have mercy on your souls." Hastily
the mother packed them off to a priest, who administered the right of
extreme marital unction, and charged them double fee on account of
their carelessness. They paid the fee, laughing inwardly, but glad to
relieve the mother of her qualms.
The children were left in the care of the grandmother, and Joseph and
Anita went forth to enlist under the banner of Charles Albert of
Piedmont and make war on superstition and the Pope.
* * * * *
Charles Albert had been a staunch supporter of the very conditions
against which the striplings, Joseph Mazzini and Joseph Garibaldi, had
made war twenty years previous. But nations, like men, sometimes have
experiences that make them grow by throes and throbs, by leaps and
bounds. The writings of Mazzini had been constantly distributed and
circulated, and the fact that they were tabued by the government added
to the joys of the illicit. A well-defined wave of republicanism swept
the land. Those sensitive to ideas awoke, like lilacs sensitive to the
breath of May.
King Charles Albert, of all the Italian kinglets, alone guessed the
temper of his people, and issued to them a constitution with the right
of franchise. This meant war upon the Austrian protectorate and the
Pope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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