ghter of
the Victor of Custoza, but the young Princess met with a terrible
death just when the betrothal was about to be announced. No one
worthier to receive from Adelaide of Burgundy the lovely title of
Queen of Italy could have been found than the Princess Margaret, who
inherited the sunny charm which had endeared her father, the Duke of
Genoa, to all who knew him.

In the autumn of 1869 another domestic event, the severe illness of
Victor Emmanuel, gave rise to an incident which made a deep impression
in Italy, and attached the nation by one link more to the King of its
choice. The illness which seized Victor Emmanuel at his hunting-box
of San Rossore, in a malarious part of Tuscany, proved so serious
that his life was despaired of. A priest was called to hear the King's
last confession, and to administer the Sacraments for the dying. After
hearing the confession, the priest said he could not give absolution
unless Victor Emmanuel signed a solemn retractation of all the acts
performed during his reign that were contrary to the interests of the
Church. The King answered, without a moment's hesitation, that he died
a Christian and a Catholic, and that if he had wronged anyone he
sincerely repented and asked pardon of God, but the signature demanded
was a political act, and if the priest wished to talk politics his
ministers were in the next room. Thither the ecclesiastic retired, but
he very soon returned, and administered the rite without more ado.
What had passed was this: General Menabrea, with a decision for which
he cannot be too much praised, threatened the priest with instant
arrest unless he surrendered his pretensions. Only those who know the
extraordinary terror inspired in an Italian Catholic by the prospect
of dying unshriven can appreciate the merit of the King, whose faith
was childlike, in standing as firm in the presence of supernatural
arms as he stood before the Austrian guns.

Menabrea's administration was then upon the eve of falling. The cause
was one of those financial crises that were symptomatic of a mischief
which has been growing from then till now, when some critics think
they see in it the fatal upas tree of Italy. The process of
transforming a country where everything was wanting--roads, railways,
lines of navigation, schools, water, lighting, sanitary provisions,
and the other hundred thousand requirements of modern life--into the
Italy of to-day, where all these things have made leaps