A REVOLUTIONARY PRINCESS.

Evening Star, Issue 13002, 22 December 1906, Page 6

A REVOLUTIONARY PRINCESS.

Tiie beautiful girl-revolutionapy whose life is recorded in Mr H. It. Whitehorse's reociil ly pubLshcd ‘A Revolutionary Princess: Her Lilo and Times,’ is neither a product of romance nor a creation of tho journalist's imagination in Russia. She was bom early in tho nineteenth century, played a romantic part in the struggle of Nortliem Italy against Austrian domination, fascinated all who know her, and was not only beautiful, but wealthy, of high birth, intelligent, generous—a wondrous embodiment of many qualities, according to her admiring biographer. Her name was Christina Bel-giojoso-Trivulzio. Born in 1803, in Milan, a daughter of one of the oldest families in Italy, she was reared in an atmosphere of political unrest, and soon after her marriage, at the age of oixteen, to a handtomo but erring husband, plunged into a whirl of conspiracy. Dogged at every footstep by Austrian spies, who kept xniuute records of all her movements and sayings, she opened a salon in Paris, which was not only tho haunt of Italian revolutionaries, but the resort of all tho celebrities of the day. Thiers and Lafayette, Musset and Heine, Victor Hugo and’ Alexandre Dumas the elder, Bellini and Rossini, Chopin and Liszt—all were attracted liy her beauty, her wit, and her passionate patriotism. Such is the picturesque personality that Mr Remseu Whitehouse depicts in this interesting volume. Ho has ransacked the literature on the subject in English, French, and Italian, and welded bis material into a pleasant narrative, which is illustrated with many portraits. The Princess was a versatile woman. Patriotism and revolutionary activity were indeed tho dominant elements in her career, but she also plunged into the study of Saint Simomsm, suddenly took a fancy for theology, and produced a portentous work on ‘The Formation of the Catholic Dogma.’ After a desperate but futile effort to lead tho Milanese insurgents to victory she set sail for tho East, travelled through Palestine, and wrote a book on her experiences. Her character may be understood from a single sentence in a letter to her wayward husband, in which she refuses his offer to replace tho jewels that sho had sacrificed to equip Mazzini's invasion of Savoy in 1833. This significant sentence is as follows : “ It is, perhaps, true that physical health can often replace spiritual well-being. I havo experienced both simultaneously, but at the same moment I lost both; hence I cannot judge which of the two would best console me for the loss of tho other." The powerful impression tiiat she. produced on Heine has been immortalised in the poet’s own utterance : “Yours is the most complete personality I have found on earth. Yes! Before 1 knew you, I imagined that persons like you, endowed with all the perfections of body and mind, existed only in fairy tales, or in the dreams of poets. Now I know that the Ideal is not a mere chimera; that a Reality corresponds to our most sublime imaginings, and when thinking of you, Princess, I some, times ceaso to doubt of another Divinity which I was also to relegate to the realm of my dreams.” Heine was not the only poet who laid his heart bare before her. Alfred de Musset, "\stur.g by the cruelty of George Sand, V.ivcrted hi? unsrion to the Princess Bclgio-Awo-Trivulzio, hoping that in the end nis former lovo would return to him. Paul de Musset, in his interesting biography of hi.s famous brother, relates that

during an illness that laid the poet low the Prinress Bolgiojoso-Trivulzio, “who never lost an opportunity of doing good,” came several times to visit the sufferer. With her own hand she administered the potions, which the invalid “dared not refuse to taie when offered by so great a lady-’ “One day,” continues the biographer, “ when he was feeling particularly ill, the Princess remarked with the utmost assurance ; ‘ Oahn yourself; no one ever dies in my poeencc.’ ’’ From a feeling of gratitudo lio made as if he believed her. but when premised to return on the morrow it was m perfect 'sincerity that lie whispered: “Then I shall not die on that day.” These ate but a few glimpses into a life that was ever active, full of noble impulses, spending itself upon music and conspiracy,