The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-14 00:00:00

ROMAN AFFAIRS.

(From a Correspondent of thelVestminster Gazette.)
ROME, Dec. 7.
On Sunday, being the first Sunday in Advent,
the Pope as usual bore the Blessed Sacrament:from
the Sixtine to the Paoline chapel, where the forty
hours' Exposition commences on that day, and is
reckoned to open the cycle of that beautiful devo-
tion for the year. On this occasion be is not borne
aloft on the talaino as at Corpds Christi, but walks,
carrying the Monstrance all down both chapels
and the great Sala Regia, which unites them,
through a crowd of clergy of every degree, in their
festal robes ; of guards in brilliant antique and mo-
dern uniforms ; of noblemen, in costumes such as
Vandyke loved to paint; of monks and religious,
in the unvarying habits of their various orders ; and
of faithful from every country under heaven. It
is one of those occasions which seem destined to
supply a symbolic tableau vivant of the universal
character of the Church.

The Holy Father showed himself firm and erect,
but little altered since the first time I assisted at
this office, now many years ago, except that I think,
as struggle after struggle is mastered year by year,
his brow acquires a more majestic serenity. He
trod with a step almost rapid in its energy, showing
his spirit as undaunted as at the commencement of
his generalship in the warfare ever waging between
the Church and the world. It is impossible to be
near Pius IX. and not catch a spark of the exube-
rant confidence in Divine Providence which seems
always to animate him.
Yesterday he assisted at the funeral office of Car-
dinal Bofondi, who died on Tuesday, aged 72,
fulfilling the popular tradition that cardinals always
die in triads ; the other two on this occasion being
Cardinal Roberti, and Cardinal Sterckx, Arch-
bishop of Malines.
Among other little acts of attention to those who
have suffered in his cause that I have heard cited
is that of sending a beautifullpanther skin to Lieu-
tenant-Colonel de Charette, with the message that
it was to cover the wounds of his horse. This
officer, who had had a horse killed under him at

Nerola, had mounted a favourite charger on the
day of the action at Mentana, which he rode till it
was disabled by three wounds ; he was obliged
then to dismount, but continued to fight on foot till
a horse was brought him, captured from a Garibal-
dian officer; his own is, fortunately, in a fair way
to recovery.
I have already mentioned that he has devoted all
the available space in the Quirinal to the service of
the wounded. Two spacious halls—the Sala Con-
sistoro and the next to it—in one of which stands
the curious water organ (like that at the late Em-
peror Maximilian's Palace of Hellbrunn), presented
by Joseph 11. to Pius VI.--are at present occupied
by about twenty-five soldiers, who have been
selected from among those whose convalescence is
advancing, as the spacious gardens, more than a
mile in circuit, attached to the palace, are particu-
larly advantageous for their use. The Pope gave
the men in this temporary refuge the consolation of
his visit and benediction on Saturday ; he spent an
hour talking with the men, and was, of course, re-
ceived with the usual enthusiasm.

It is when visiting these various depots,lweek by
week, standing over the painful dissolution or the
tardy restoration of these brave fellows, that the
wantonness of the late attack is specially brought
home to one ; the amelioration one had hopefully
watched yielding to a supervening attack of fever ;
the terrible amputation at last declaring itself ne-
cessary where one had hoped to have struggled
successfully against it ; the prolonged flickering be-
tween recovery and relapse of weakly constitutions ;
the final dismissal of fine, well made forms hope-
lessly mutilated for ever, or subjected to chronic
conditions of painful disease ; the silent writhing,
the suppressed groans, the all but worn-out patience
of the most enduring. • To observe the bravest as he
endeavours silently to realize a future from which
his la teAreams of glory and promotion are suddenly
blotted out, in which he who anon left his betrothed
full of pride in his bearded manhood, must return
to her a helpless cripple, blind, or halt, or maimed ;
dependent on others' help who would have been
their support and stay. To see the face which in
the field confronted death without flinching,
blanched at mention of the use of the surgeon's
knife ; or the spirit which shrinks not even from
this yet, quelled in all its high courage by the dire
agony of the actual operation or its consequent
reaction. Still more, to grapple with those strange-
forms of phantasy with which fever invests the
strong man's soul—to calm the rambling imagina-
tion, and withdraw it from its wild and troubled
flights, for truly the flesh is weak where the spirit
is most willing. In the long and silent hours the
thought forces itself home, all this depressing waste
—although borne as we see it here, it is, indeed,
not wasted—of human suffering, whence does it
arise ? From one man's ambition, another's love
of notoriety, another's unbridled violence. Such
horrors rouse one's indignation to the utmost
against the agitators who have come to pour them
out upon us. Especially that the wounds received
even in fight are not always the most distressing.
The splinter of a bomb, the mined barrack, or
treacherous invention, supplies us with acme of
our worst, even though isolated, cases.
I saw a victim to a form of special atrocity
brought into San Spirito one day this week. It
was a fine young Spanish Zouave, who, coming out
of a cafe late in the evening, was accosted by one
of . the Mazzinian agents ; the 'Gonave, being
himself a foreigner, had not the advantage of de-
teoting the north Italian accent, which might, pro-
bably, have put a Roman on his guard. After a
few minutes' friendly conversation on different
subjects, the fellow pulled out his cigars, and
lighting his own, offered another to his new ac-
quaintance. Your Zouave never refuses a cigar,
as all who are acquainted with continental customs
are aware, nothing is more common than this little
attention among even utter strangers. So, of course,
he suspected nothing wrong. The stranger bowed
politely and passed on his way, and was out of
sight while the Zouave was striking his fusee. He
had scarcely taken a puff, however, when the cigar
so acquired suddenly burst, filling his mouth with
a corrosive poison, the fumes of which rendered
him insensible for some minutes. It is commonly
observed here that a " special providence " watches
over the Zouave. Notwithstanding the lateness of
the hour, and the remoteness of the locality-, a
passer-by found him almbst immediately, and
carried him into a chemist's shop, where he was
promptly treated, and hence there seems no reason
to apprehend serious consequences.
It was, however, gratuitously cruel, as it could
not possibly put more than one enemy hors de com-
bat, had it even succeeded. The story, of course,
got repeated in the course of the day through
every barrack in Rome, and the plot can, there-
fore, hardly be repeated. And yet it is not needed,
either, for a few explosive cigars have entered into
the tactics of every former attempt at Revolution.
Yet it is heartless wretches who invent such bar-
barities as these who venture, in the journals in
which they delude the public mind in Italy, to
chatge the Pontifical Government with cruelty in
its treatment of those who have been sent here to
fight with and injure its subjects.
They do not seem to consider that when a man
enters the army he takes the chance of all these
things. A la guerre comme a la guerre ; and have
we not suffered irreparable losses through the
neglect with which the Garibaldians treated some of
our wounded? Our own countryman, Collingridge,
died not of his wounds which were not mortal,
but of sheer and probably calculated mismanage-
ment. For while some of the privates, whom they
might have imagined they could gain over by
kindness and attention, were sedulously nursed,
officers like De Quelen and Guillemain were left
to perish in the cold night air, their wounds
untended for hours and till too late to save. People
who admit such tactics into their policy can readily
suspect the same of others.
It is fair to add that only the least respectable
papers indulge in this particular form of falsehood.
No better proof of its utter groundlessness could be
given, perhaps, than the fearless reproduetion of
the charge in its worst form in the Roman papers.
Every one who has any personal acquaintance with

the matter knows the prisoners have had nothing
to complain of, and what is more, that they have
not complained. The pretended difficulty of access
to them has not been discovered by any who
wished to relieve them. And, besides the Romans
who have been forward to do this, there have been
English and Americans who have got up collections

of money, and of various objects which they might
stand in need of, andthese also have been constantly
admitted to minister to them. Among others, used
to come a Princess della Torre, a Florentine, I be-
lieve, but the above name and title probably as-
sumed, whose liberal opinions were well known.
She nevertheless met with no obstruction in her

visits to the prisoners. This indulgence has been
ill-repaid, for it has since become known that she
was carrying'on, or endeavouring to carry on, an
active propaganda among the young Romans, and
was particularly assiduous in her attentions to the
army. She has been requested by the police to
return northwards, and as she refuses to comply, a
gendarme is stationed at her door.
Her house was but one centre of this kind of
plot ; there are several others chiefly of an inferior
order, where Mazzinian propagandists carry on
the most strenuous efforts to gain over the soldiers
by all manlier of fine promises and flattery. Nor do
they rest on " fair means" alone. They are far
from despising harsh measures. It is not easy, of
course, to acquire a knowledge of all their ma-
chinations, which are sedulously conducted in the
dark in every sense of the word. But I have the
most unimpeachable authority for asserting that
the most tyrannical threats have been held over
many men of the middle class to induce them to
join the movement. Your modern Roman is not
troubled with over much pluck or strength of cha-
racter, and many a man who out of devotion to the
Government would have turned a deaf ear to any
amount of bribing, may not be proof against a
promise of a stab in the dark. And there is no
doubt that for some time before the 22nd of Oc-
tober, the day fixed for the great plot which has
not yet received a title, but which deserves a place
among the most atrocious conspiracies of history,
they did induce a certain number of trembling citi-
zens to assent to cast in their lot with them if
they succeeded. All that time when, as General
Kanzler expressed it, a horde of assassins was
making its way up to the very gates ; when the
principal barracks had their drains stuffed with
barrels of gunpowder, so that it seemed only to
need a few matches to annihilate the army ; when
depots of arms and infernal machines of various
kinds had been contrived in various points of the
city, with which to massacre all who had the
courage to resist ; when various similar preparations
were in readiness, and it only wanted the signal
to be given in order to set the whole in motion
like a turn of the wheel on a box-full of auto-
matons. At that time the Mazzinian and Gari-
baldian agents were' so cock-sure of being shortly
in possession of the city, that they inspired awe by
their very self-assertion, and those who could not
be won by a promise of place and fee from the
new Government yielded to the threat of guillo-
tine, confiscation, and lawless ravage without
rescue. There were some such, of whom I know,
who desired the Gendarmi to arrest them ; who
looked on a temporary sequestration as a refuge
against the vengeance of the invaders ; but the
Gendarmi knew them for the most part as well-
affected citizens and they would not.
That plot was baffled primarily by the deter-
mination of one man, and that man, so to speak,
the very incarnation of the idea of the Roman
people—the Senator of Rome. It was reported
to him that the signal which was to set the conspi-
rators to work was the ringing of the Capitol bell ;
and determined to prevent it, he took upon himself
the watch, while the small body of military who
bed been hastily called to the spot were keeping
the aggressors at bay, he defended the door giving
access to the bell with his life. It would have been
a grand historic night to have been in Rome ; un-
fortunately, I only arrived a day or two later ; but
I am told by those who were here, that the aspect
of the people was as of those who expected a thing
of terror, and not at all that of those who looked
for a " deliverance." A bomb was thrown near

a shop where a friend of mine was an hour before
nightfall, and he heard the master exclaim, with a
face blanched by fear, " Dio !it has begun !" lle
was clearly one who had been tampered with, for
he knew what was coming; but he was a genuine
Roman, and there was no triumph in his mien
at the prospect of the success of a " Liberal Go-
vernment."

But the spirit which animated Senator Cavaletti
kindled the troops no less. For a long time three
men bore the whole brunt of defending the broad
flight of the Capitol steps, and until relieved,
succeeded in keeping at bay all who approached to
the attack—some say to the number of 500. I
doubt whether the Garibaldians had introduced so
many of their number into Rome ; but no doubt
there was a crowd far out-numbering the triad of
defenders, and that these did wonders. In fact,
every one who had anything to do that night did
wonders. The whole escape was a wonder, and
perhaps the most wonderful episode of all was the
successful defence by the Zouaves of the Porto
San Paolo, and their take of arms and money in
the Villa outside it, at the very time when they
ought to have been blown into the air by the explo-
sion of the only barracks where the signal was
not waited for, and which, as it turned out, was just

that one in which there was the least harm to be
done.

Every one, however, of the numerous successes
and deliverances we have had has partaken equally
of the character of a miracle. In fact, to use the
words of one who, by his office, has the means of
seeing the dessous des cartes, and appreciating to
the utmost the crisis we have lived through, " we
have for weeks past been passing literally through
a series of miracles."

All this is a digression from the regular report
of the week, but it is, perhaps, not amiss now and
then to summarize and look at as a whole the
events we have been following piece by piece as
they occur.

To take up the narrative of more recent events.
The English Garibaldian, calling himself Scholey,
but still believed by many to be Peard, died last
week, in spite of the first apparent success of the
amputation. He was a rather fine looking man,
strikingly like Garibaldi in person. His poor
mother was telegraphed for as soon as it became
apparent that he was in danger, and she arrived
just too late to see him alive, and even while the
body was yet warm. She travelled under the name
of Scholey.
We have had two losses among the wounded of
the Roman army also, both of ' Belgian Zouaves,
Alcantara and Muller by name. Mgr. Borromeo
Arese, maggior-domo of the Pope, administered
extreme unction to them, and sang a Requiem Mass
for them next day at Sta. Maria, in Traspontina.
They had been nursed together at the house of
the Belgian Brothers of Mercy in the Piazza Pia,
and they both died on Friday. The American Col-
lege has received Mr. Larroque, the Canadian, so
badly wounded at Mentana, who, after a severe
crisis, is progressing favourably. The other Ca-
nadian, Mr. Hugh Murray, wounded in two places
in the same arm (above and below the elbow) by
the same ball, is also going on well, and is now
among the convalescents at the Quirinal. He
strikes one as a remarkably fine soldier, and I
think his earnest desire to rejoin his company, as
well as his great equanimity under sufferings and
inconvenience, have had some part in hastening
his recovery.

I should fill more space than you have to spare
if I were to tell you of half the cases of interest that
come under our notice in the hospitals, but the
spirit that animates every individual there gives the
lie to the miserable mockery of calling them mer-
cenaries. One of the most suffering cases is that
of a young man from Nantes—there are so many
from Nantes. He entered two years ago when only
sixteen, though he looks quite a man. During the
whole of this last month of pain, he has never been
heard to utter a word of complaint, everything
seems to come right to him, and he makes every
thing a motive of thankfulness. When his brother
at home heard he was disabled, instead of being
cast down or disheartened, he immediately set out