Italy brought him one morning to my possible to know him without loving him. chamber. I had just been spitting blood, I doubt whether any human creature, even and the first words I said to him were a woman, could have been loved as well. these: "Sir, you are the only man whom I He had at Turin a friend, to whom he was can, in my condition, desire yet to know." able to confide his wife and children, and How many times since have we recalled this another had accompanied him in his exile. first interview, I dying, he condemned to Behold in this a striking proof of the sentideath, concealed under a feigned name, ment which he inspired. At an early age without resources, and almost without he was attached to the regiment of his father bread! Omitting the details of our conver- in the service of the army of the Alps. sation, it will be sufficient to say that I Here a young man of his own country had found still more than I had expected. In his been given him as a comrade. Having left look, his gait, in all his words, I easily re- the army at Piedmont, this young man lost cognized the fire and energy of the author sight of his youthful master; but a deep reof the proclamation of the 23d of March; membrance of him never left his heart. One and at the same time my feeble health dy the noble Count, lying in his wretched seemed to inspire him with an affectionate garret in the street Francs-Bourgeois, saw compassion, expressed each moment by the suddenly standing before him the poor Bossi, most amiable cares. Seeing my critical then a coffee-house keeper of Paris. Bossi situation, he forgot himself and thought had learned by the public journals the adonly of me. Our long conversation, of ventures of his young officer, and could take which he bore the burden, having left me no rest until he had discovered his abode agitated and feeble, he returned in the and offered to him his scanty savings. How evening to inquire about me. The next many times, after this, while repairing to morning he came again, and so the morning the prison of Santa-Rosa, have I found, at after; and at the expiration of a few days, the door of the Salle Saint-Martin, Bossi or we felt as if we had passed our lives together. his wife with a basket of fruits, waiting The name which he had taken was that of whole hours for an opportunity to glide in Conti. He lodged near me, in the street with me and place their offering before the Francs-Bourgeois-Saint-Michel, opposite the prisoner, with the respect of an old servant street Racine, in a furnished attic chamber and the tenderness of a true friend. with a friend from Turin, who had voluntarily left his country to follow him, although he had taken no part in the revolution, and was in no wise compromised by it.

Who then is this man, with whom one can prefer exile to the sweets of country and of family? It is impossible to express the charm of his society. To me, this charm, I repeat, was in the union of strength and kindness. I saw him always ready, at the least ray of hope, to engage in the most perilous enterprises, and I found him happy too in passing his life obscurely by the bedside of a suffering friend. His heart was an inexhaustible store of affectionate sentiment. To every one he was good, even to tender

From the end of October, 1821, until the 1st of January, 1822, we lived together in the sweetest and most profound intimacy. During the whole day, until five or six o'clock in the evening, he remained in his little room in the street of the Francs-Bourgeois, occupied in reading and preparing a work on the constitutional governments of the nineteenth century. After dinner, night approaching, he left his cell, reached the street d'Enfer, where I resided, and spent the evening with me until eleven or twelve o'clock. I too had arranged my mode of life somewhat like his. I passed the day in taking medicine and in studying Plato; at evening I closed my books and received my friends. Santa-Rosa had a passion for conversation, and he talked wonderfully; but I was so languid and so feeble that I could not support the energy of his words. They produced fever and nervous excitement, which terminated in prostration and faintness. Then the energetic man gave place to the most affectionate creature. How many nights has he spent at my bed-side

with my old nurse! As soon as I felt re- | tune or of rank, and was indifferent to matelieved, he would cast himself, all dressed, rial well-being; but he was ambitious of upon a sofa, and, by the aid of a good con- glory. So, in morality he sincerely cherished science and incomparable health, sleep, de- virtue; he made duty a matter of religion, spite all sorrow, till the break of day. but he also felt the need of loving, and of I must here sketch his portrait. Santa- being loved, and love or tender friendship Rosa was about forty years of age. He was was necessary for his heart. As to religion, of medium stature, about five feet two he passed in Italy for a man of great piety, inches. His head was large, his forehead and in fact he was full of respect for Chrisbald, lips and nose somewhat prominent, | tianity, which he had carefully studied. He and he usually wore spectacles. There was was even somewhat of a theologian. He nothing elegant in his manners; his tone was told me that in Switzerland he argued strong and manly, and his forms of expres- against the Protestant theologians, and desion were infinitely polished. He was far fended Catholicism; but his faith was not from being handsome; but his face, when that of Mazoni, and I have discovered little it was animated,—and it was always ani- more at the bottom of his heart than the mated, had something so passionate, that faith of the Savoyard vicar. Greedy of it became interesting. What was most re- knowledge, besides, attaching every thing to markable in him, was an extraordinary politics, he devoured in my books whatever strength of body. Neither large nor small, belonged to morality and practice. Although neither fat nor lean, he was in vigor and agility liberal, or rather because he was truly so, he a veritable lion. If he forgot himself in the dreaded the influence of pretended liberal least, he no longer walked, he bounded. He declamations; and observing the decline of had muscles of steel, and his hand was a religious faith in European society, he felt vise in which he could hold the strongest. the want of a noble and elevated moral I have seen him lift, almost without effort, philosophy. He possessed naturally good the heaviest tables. He was capable of en- metaphysical powers, with a generous and during the longest fatigues, and seemed well cultivated mind. No one in the world born for the labors of war. Of this occu- has so much encouraged and sustained me pation he was passionately fond. He had in my philosophical career. My designs been a captain of grenadiers, and no one became his own, and if he had remained in had received from nature more of those France, he would have given to the cause of physical and moral qualities which make philosophy in its moral and political applithe true soldier. His manner was animated, cations another excellent writer, a firm, elebut serious. His whole person and his very vated, and persuasive organ. aspect gave the idea of force.

His mind doubtless was not that of a I have never seen a more touching spec- man of letters, nor of a philosopher, but of a tacle than that of this man, so strong, who military man and of a politican. That mind had so much need of air to expand his chest, was correct and upright like his heart. He movement for the exercise of robust limbs detested paradoxes, and in grave matters, and inexhaustible activity, metamorphosing the expression of hazardous, arbitrary, perhimself into a true Sister of Charity, now sonal opinions, inspired him with deep resilent, now gay, restraining his words and pugnance. He chided me often in regard almost his breath, that he might not disturb to some of my own opinions, and led me the frail creature in whom he was so inter- continually from the narrow and dangerous ested. The gentleness of the weak affords paths of personal theories to the great road little that is seductive, for we may say that of common sense and universal consciousit is perhaps mere weakness; but the ten-ness. He had neither breadth nor originderness of strength has a charm almost divine.

We held in fact the same opinions, and he contributed not a little to strengthen me in my convictions. Like myself, he was profoundly constitutional, neither servile nor nocratic, without envy, and without inso

He had no ambition either of for

ality of thought, but he felt with depth and energy, and expressed himself, spoke and wrote with gravity and with emotion. His work on the Piedmontese Revolution has in it some truly beautiful pages; and that was his first effort! What would he not have done had he lived?

In politics, this pretended revolutionist

celebrated Abby Valsperga de Caluso, great | movement; and that for a civil movement profiency in classic studies, with several fel- the concurrence of secret societies would be low-disciples, since well known in letters. indispensable. He deplored this necessity, The name of his family was so respected in and he accused the nobility and the Piedhis province, and he himself bore it so well, montese proprietors (gli possidenti) of having that at the age of twenty-four years he was destroyed both the country and themselves elected by his fellow-citizens Mayor of Savig- by not performing their duty, by not boldly liano, and passed several years of his youth warning the King of the perils of Piedmont, in the exercise of this office, wherein he ac- and by forcing patriotism to have recourse quired skill in civil affairs. But this was not to secret plots. His loyalty disdained al a career for a man without fortune. He mystery; and without confessing the fact, was then persuaded, despite his disinclina- I saw that his chivalry experienced a sort of tion, to enter into the French administration, inward shame at having been driven little which at that time governed Piedmont: he by little to this extremity. He continually was made sub-prefect of Spezzia in the State repeated to me: "Secret societies are the of Genoa, and he performed these functions pest of Italy; but how can we dispense with during the years 1812, 1813, and 1814, up them, when there is no publicity, no legal to the Restoration. Santa-Rosa hailed with means of expressing one's opinion with imenthusiasm the return of the house of Savoy; punity?" He told me that for a long time and in 1815, believing that the arrival of he resolved not to participate with any Napoleon at Paris during the hundred days secret society, to abstain from all action, and would bring about a long war, he left the to limit himself to great moral and political civil for the military service, and made the publications, capable of influencing opinion very short campaign of 1815, as a Captain and regenerating Italy. This is what he in the grenadiers of the royal guard. Gene- called a literary conspiracy. Certainly it ral repose having succeeded the fall of Na- would have been more useful than the sad poleon, he once more left the career of arms, contest of 1821. His fancy was to recomfor one in which his civil and military knowl- mence this literary conspiracy from the midst edge were happily combined, that of the of France. His consolation was that he administration of military affairs. He en- had never done any thing for himself, and tered the Ministry of War, and was charged that he had only thought of his country. with very responsible duties. It was then, His clear conscience and natural energy, I believe, that he married a young person united, secured to him, in our solitude of who was able to boast more of birth than Arcueil, a tranquil and almost happy life. fortune. By this marriage he had several children. He was in high estimation, favored at court, and destined to a brilliant career, when the Neapolitan revolution broke out; a revolution which Austria undertook violently to suppress, thus openly affecting the domination of Italy.

I ought to impose upon myself a religious silence in regard to the confidential matters which the friendship of SantaRosa committed to me, but I may, I ought to say one thing: that in the profound solitude in which we lived, speaking to a friend whose political opinions were as well defined as his own, Santa-Rosa assured me twenty times that his friends and he had connection with secret societies only at a very late period, at the last extremity, when it was demonstrated that the Piedmontese government was without force sufficient to resist Austria; that a military movement

uld be powerless if it depended on a civil

My bad health and his imprudent friendship, together with the baseness of the French police, tore him from his solitude and ruined him for ever. If he had remained with me, he might have reshaped his destiny; he might have passed the whole period of the Restoration in honorable labors, which would have given glory to his name; he might have reached the revolution of July, and then could have chosen either to re-enter Piedmont as did MM. de SaintMarsan and Lisio, or enter, like M. de Collegno, into the service of France; and in this case an immense career would have been before him, if, at the same time, this proud mind, disdainful of good as well as bad fortune, had ever been able to consent to have any other country than that which he had wished to serve, and which his misfortunes themselves had rendered more dear and more sacred. Alas! all this future was destroyed in a single day. One day the

condition of my lungs so frightened Santa- | make strict search among my papers. I Rosa, that he conjured me to seek help in did not know what all this meant, and it Paris. I yielded; I returned to the Lux- was only at the end of the examination, the embourg. Santa-Rosa, uneasy, could not result of which was to discover to them remain at Arcueil, and in the evening I saw some notes on Proclus and on Plato, that him appear at the side of my bed. Instead the commissary informed me that I had of staying with me, he desired to pass the been searched on account of Santa-Rosa, night in his old lodging; and before going who had been arrested the evening before there he had the imprudence to enter a coffee- on leaving my house. Struck by this inhouse in the Place de l'Odeon, for the pur- telligence as with a thunder-bolt, I transpose of reading the journals. Scarcely had ported myself immediately to the house of he left the house when he was seized by M. de Laveau, and demanded of him why, seven or eight agents of the police, thrown if he accused of conspiracy against the on the ground, conducted to the Prefect, French Government a man who knew no and cast into prison. It appears that he other person than myself at Paris, he had had been recognized at the barrier where not placed me under the same arrest; or, if some time before he had been described. he dared not also to accuse me of conspiracy, why he complained of a man who could have done nothing except through me and with me. If it was not in fact a question of conspiracy against France, I showed him what a lack of magnanimity there was in pursuing a proscribed person, because he was under another name than his own, when moreover this proscribed person was a gallant man, and inoffensive in his life; and I asked to see Santa-Rosa at once. M. de Laveau was a party-man like M. Franchet; he was of a narrow and suspicious mind, but he was an honest man. He had just interrogated Santa-Rosa a second time; he had just read the report of the commissary of police on the results of the search made at my house, and was beginning to feel that the accusation of conspiracy against the French Government was deprived of all foundation. My visit, by proving to him that we were not afraid, and that we did not fear a trial, was sufficient to persuade him. At the same time he thought that he must still affect some doubt, and announced to me that the trial would take place. I demanded to appear in it as evidence, and a few days after I was summoned before the magistrate, M. Debelleyme, since Prefect of Police, and now member of the Chamber of Deputies. The examination was short and minute. M. Debelleyme displayed impartiality and perfect moderation. He conceived, in regard to the prisoner, a just idea of his morality, and always spoke to me of him with respect and benevolence. This ridiculous process terminated in an ordinance declaring that there was no cause of action on the ground of conspiracy, the only one which had occasioned the arrest. As to the affair

During the same night of his arrest, he was interrogated by the Prefect of Police. From the moment of this first interrogatory, Santa-Rosa acknowledged his true name, and expressed those sentiments which had made a lively impression upou the fanatical but honest M. de Laveau. He repelled with indignation the accusation of having engaged in machinations against the French Government; he declared that he was absolutely a stranger to all that was passing in France, and that his only and involuntary crime was in being at Paris under another name than his own. Having been interrogated in regard to his connections in Paris, he named me as the only friend he had. He asked as a favor that I should not be brought into this affair, and that I might be spared a visit which might be fatal to my health, offering himself all the information which might be demanded, and even the most severe reparation, rather than expose him who had given him hospitality. The sentence of extradition having been pronounced, Santa-Rosa seemed to accept his fate with that simple pride which never fails of its effect. He seemed uneasy only on a single point, the consequences which this affair might have upon my health.

Whilst this was passing at the prefecture of police, I was in my bed, covered with leeches, and in the most deplorable condition. The following day, between four and five o'clock in the morning, I heard a loud knock at my door, and suddenly five or six gendarmes rushed into my room, having at their head a commissary of police, who, showing his scarf, signified to me, in the name of the King, that he had orders to