RATAZZI'S DEATH AND FUNERAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 25, 18 October 1873, Page 12

RATAZZI'S DEATH AND FUNERAL.

(Correspondent of the Tablet.) Human help was utterly in vain, and of supernatural help he was cruelly deprived by his self-styled friends. Madame Ratazzi at An early hour sent for a Capuchin Friar, a friend of the family, to administer the consolations of religion to the evidently dying man, but when he v arrived at the house, the Villa Ricci, he was not admitted.' The ' Paese ' (Rattazzi's journal) thus narrates the fact : " Signor Oraini having heard that the French maid had ordered a bed to be prepared for the Friar, went to him and' said, * You are desired to return do Frosinone, there is no room for you here nor bed either.' The pri«t tranquilly replied, ' I will sit up,' (staro in piedi.) Orsini rejoined ' And I desire that you do not sacrifice yourself — TJp begone to Frosinone {su via a Frosinone) if you like you can come back to-mor-row at noon.' " The piiest replied in the most humble and pacific manner that he would stay there "on his feet ; " — that is without giving the slightest inconvenience to any one, but it was all in vain. The poor Franciscan \va3 expelled and Ilattazzi died without the Sacraments and without any spiritual aid. This was unknown to Mme. Rattazzi — who however retains the name of h«r first husband and the title of her mother and is called the Princess of Solms. The Oruini who thus took upon himself to exclude the priest from, Signor Rattazzi's house is said to be a brother of the assassin Orsini of bomb celebrity, who was guillotined in Paris in ISSB. The funeral procession iv Rome from Signor Rattazzi's residence, the Piazza Santa Croce — where the corpse had arrived the previous evening freni Frosinone to the railway station was as gorgeous as civil pomp could make it. There were Royal State aud Municipal State carriages, National G-uards, trades with their banners mid a band, but no eigu of religion of any kind. A bystander among the crowd also noticed that few of the populace took off their hats, a custom hitherto universal in this j courtry. They seemed instiactirely to recognise that it was a purely civic procession. After the funeral had passed, aud the body had been delivered at the station to the persons from Alexandria deputed to receive it by the municipality of that place —that being the native place of Signor Rattazzi and the one which gave him his seat in the Italian Parliament — the eight-seers lounged away. I heard' a decently drased woman of the lower class say, " Nothing of religion," as' if shocked at the utter absence of the remotest sign that the deceased had been a Christian ; and a man of the same rank, with that fineedged sarcasm so frequent among the Trasteverini reply, " What would j you have ? If one dies like an ass why noc be buried like an ass ? It is not the fashion to have a soul.'' The ' l'ablet ' draws attention to a coincidence with regard to- the death of Rattazzi. He died on the 6th June, the anniversary of the death of Cavour, his great political leader, and his associate iv the | preparation of the Piedmontese laws against the Religious Orders.

A meeting, at which all the bishops of Ireland were present, except those of Ross and Cork, and three bishops elect, was held at Maynoofcb in June, when the entire question of Irish education, inclusive of University education, was carefully considered by the assembled prelates. We read that it was decided ou establishing about 150 free bursaries in Maynooth College.