by GIOSUE CARDUCCI - World eBook Library

Preface
Central and Southern Italy, with the Pope for Sovereign
Lord,
filled the minds of certain reformers. It is hard to
say whether such an event would have been more
disastrous to the nation or to the Church. But the
dream vanished as it came. In 1848 the torch of revolu-
tion passed from one European country to another with a
celerity and a flare disconcerting to that immense majority
of quiet people whom timidity and honest conviction always
bind together in all lands and times as moderates. The
Pope, kindly and not ill-disposed at first to the Reformers,
saw the constitution of almost every country on the Conti-
nent shaken, and some finally upset. He yielded to fear and
withdrew, without warning, the support he had promised
to men who, trusting in his word, had risked everything
for his sake. Deserted, they paid the penalty. Perhaps it
is not wonderful that those who escaped spoke, not or
timidity but of treachery, and that the name of Judas
Iscariot was muttered in their ranks. A few years later,
far from having founded a kingdom, Pius could not unaided
hold Rome. Napoleon, strong enough
18
at Villa Franca to