A REVOLUTIONARY PRINCESS.*

THE biographer of Princess Belgiojoso claims for his heroine a high and important place in the ranks of the patriots who made Italian unity. She had, no doubt, a considerable hold on popular imagination ; she was beautiful, enthusiastic, clever, and original; though both a visionary and an actress, she was a sincere patriot. She succeeded in" creating the impression that hers was a figure of no mean significance in the development of plot and action." But the impression was not altogether true, though the Austrian Government thought it worth while to spy upon her doings during a great part of her life. And the title of "political martyr" appears to be a decidedly higher one than she deserved. It is easy to under- stand, however, how the woman who was a fascinating riddle to her contemporaries may continue to be something of a puzzle to the present day. In any case, she was a curiously interesting personality. Her Life was well worth writing, mixed up as it is with the most romantic political events of the nineteenth century.

Christina, daughter of the Marchese Trividzio, was born at Milan in 1808. Her father died early, and her mother married, shortly afterwards, the Marchese Visconti d'Aragona. Both the Trivnlzio and _Aragon& families were closely connected with the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy and attached to the Court of the Viceroy, Eugene Beanbarnais. The return of Austrian domination in 1815 threw these families and many more into opposition, and Christina grew up in a society full of political discontent and a rising spirit of Nationalism. She was only thirteen when her stepfather was arrested for his share in the plot of the Federati, and

• A Revolutionary Princess Christina Beigiojaa-Trimisio, _her Liya and Timm 18084871. By, H. Emmen Whitehouse. Mustrated. London T. Fisher Unwiu. [10a. dd. neUr

though he personally escaped with life and liberty, several of his friends were condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

At sixteen Christina was =flied to Prince Emilio Belgiojoso, a great singer and musical artist, but of a nature and character absolutely unsuited to his wife, who, besides being intellectual and romantic, was always physically un- healthy. To put it in Mr. Whitehouse's rather ornate way, "abnormal psychological peculiarities were intensified by distressing pathological disturbances." Their only meeting. place was on the ground of conspiracy. Beginning as Carbonari, with the object of a national Constitutional Monarchy, they afterwards inclined towards following Idazzini and his purely Republican ideal. Any stick, indeed, was good enough to beat a dog with,—the dog Austria; any kind of conspiracy would do if its end was the liberation of Italy. It is not evident, however, from all the particulars given us of Princess Belgiojoso's activity at this time that she was of much practical use to her party, except by the personal influence of her beauty and peculiar attractiveness, which made the Austrian Government think her worth arresting, and drew great Frenchmen to her feet.

By this time (1830) she was practically separated from her husband, and she escaped first to Geneva and Lugano, where she was the centre of Republican society, then to Marseilles, finally making her home in Paris. During the early years of her residence there her reputation suffered through the foolish selfishness of young "patriots" and refugees of her own nation. It is only fair to say that this kind of accusation seems to have been based on very little &all?. The Princess was generous, rash, and unsuspicious ; she treated her country- men as brothers, sharing with them what fortune the con- fiscation of her estates bad left her. At one time she appears to have been in real difficulties, and it is said—Mr. White- house thinks untruly—that she actually applied for help to the Austrian Ambassador. She painted fans for her living. She attracted the passionate sympathy and admiration of Adolphe Thiers, then at the beginning of his career, and of La Fayette, in the declining days of his. In that time, sacred to mediocrity and sham, her romantic personality and genius for effect made a wonderful impression, especially on men. "Daniel Stern's" description of her in Iles Souvenirs- " Pale, thin to emaciation, with eyes of flame, she cultivated the aspect of a spectre or a phantom "—shows what a clear- sighted woman thought of her. Even her theological studies were taken seriously by fashionable divines and learned critics. Sainte-Beuve himself wasted time on reading and criticising the ponderous volumes of her Bumf. ear in Formation du Jiogme Catholique. While composing this monumental work the Princess used to appear at the Italian Opera "draped

in the ashen-hued tunic of the Gray Sisters her dark tresses circled with a garland of pond lilies."

She was reconciled with her husband, who joined her in Paris, but not for very long; he eloped with the Duchesse de Plaisance, and they never, apparently, met again. She lived chiefly in Paris till the Revolutionary tide of 1848 carried her back to her native country ; during these years she was the adored of Heine and of Alfred de Musset—whose lovely verses "Sur une Morte " were written in revenge for her supposed heartlessness—and the friend of a large circle of literary men, novelists, historians, politicians. M. Hauotaux Las compared her to Madame du Defraud, " avec plus de flamme" ; and be adds that she did snore than any one in France for the propagation of the Italian idea. She found, however, that little was to be hoped from the Government of Louis Philippe, and long before 1848 she had shown practical sympathy with Louis Napoleon as "a fellow-conspirator."

Her intervention in Italy was not happy in its results. With the idea of aiding the Revolution already active in Lombardy, she sailed from Naples with a column of volun- teers. It was the most conspicuous moment of her life, and her own .enthusiasm was quite equalled by that of her followers. Their reception at Milan was disappointing. They were strongly Republican; the Provisional Government was inclined to Charles Albert and a Constitutional Monarchy. Count Casati made the best of it harangued the "giovinotti napolitani," and packed them off to the seat of war. Not many days later a few of them reappeared in the streets of Milan, ragged and starving. "They never saw the enemy," wrote Count Hiibner, "but committed such depredations of all kinds that the exasperated peasantry more or less

exterminated them. Thus ended this great and essentially

Republican demonstration the Princess, I doubt not; will easily console herself, and will find means of occupying her leisure."

When Charles Albert's blundering campaign was over, and Austria, at the moment, was again triumphant in Lombardy, Princess Belgiojoso returned to Paris to continue her "repre- sentation" of Italy. She hoped great things from Louis Napoleon, and rejoiced in his triumph. But the French intervention, which took shape in General Ondinot's expedi- tion to Rome after the Pope's flight, filled her—as it did all friends of Italy—with rage and disappointment. She now showed her patriotism more wisely than ever before;- her name will always be honoured as the foremost of those who devoted themselves to charitable work during the siege and as long as possible after it. There may be different opinions as to the wisdom of the young Roman Republic and its loaders; there can be none as to their heroism and devotion to an ideal. And here the Princess was equal to any of them. She "laboured incessantly for the relief and comfort of the wounded, the sick, and the dying." The direction of the Roman hospitals WRS made over to her. It is well to quote Mr. Story's description of how he found her "sitting surrounded with men and women, giving her various orders with calmness and clearness, and showing the greatest practicality and good sense in all her arrangements. She has laid down strict rules,

and reduced the establishment to order and discipline she has a genius for ordering and systematising."

It is impossible here to follow Princess Belgiojoso through her travels in the East, from which she returned to make a friend of Cavonr, to assist him in his clever diplomacy, and at his suggestion to write her Histoire de la Maison tie Savoie, a book which, as Cavour intended, was of use in influencing public, opinion in favour of the Piedmontese dynasty. She spent her last years chiefly at Milan or at her villa at Blevio, on Lake Como, surrounded by crowds of guests of every nationality. She died at Milan in 1871, not an old woman, but having lived long enough to see the United Italy which had been the object of her dreams.

Mr. Henry James in his William Wetmore Story and his , Friends has something to say about Princess Belgiojoso which seems worth adding to the remarks of her biographer. He observes that we are left

"in depths of doubt as to the relation, in her character, of the element of sincerity and the element that we have learned, since her day, from expert neighbours, to call by the useful name of rabotinage • Nothing is more curious, as we read her '- story, than the apparent mixture in her of the love of the thing in itself and the love of all the attitudes and aspects, the eccentricities and superfluities of the thing ; a mixture which, however, after all, may represent little more than the fact that she was romantic, so to speak, in spite of herself Not the least interest she would probably present to a near view would ho by freshly reminding us that the great political or social agitator is most often a bird of curious plumage, all of whose feathers, even the queerest, play their part in his flight."

All this, and more, is a suggestive commentary on the life of a lady who was—to quote Mr. James again—" at once a sincere, a passionate crusader, and a 'bounder,' as we elegantly say, of the real bounding temperament!"