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The way of treachery was dark, indeed, in a world where men’s words did not match their actions and hence were empty of meaning. Expecting the worst, Fuller on 22 May (the day before her thirty-ninth birthday) wrote a dolorous letter to Richard noting that—despite Garibaldi’s having driven back the Neopolitans— “the French seem to be amusing us with a pretence of treaties, while waiting for the Austrians to come up.” The Storys, she says, fearing Rome is to be bombarded, are going away as soon as they can find horses to carry them to Germany. Fuller, however, intends to stay “in the house, under our flag, almost the only American, except the Consul and Ambassador.” Aware of the widening chasm between herself and Richard, Margaret asks him nonetheless to see how much she needs his love. Aware she might die during the assault on Rome, she sends “Love to dearest Mother, Arthur, Ellen, Lloyd,” and adds that, “should any accident, possible to these troubled times, transfer me to another scene of existence, they need not regret it. There must be better worlds than this,—where innocent blood is not ruthlessly shed, where treason does not so easily triumph, where the greatest and best are not crucified.” She hopes that, should she die, he will “keep this last word from your sister.”19 63SThe Fall of Rome Alone in Rome in “these troubled times,” Fuller at night felt the presence of ghosts in the now empty rooms of the Casa Diez. “Strange noises,” she wrote Emelyn on 29 May, “haunt the rooms. I start from my book and my sleep, seeming to hear the rustling of garments and the opening of doors, then all is silent.” In the dark, she says, “black shadows here and there seem about to take form and advance upon me.” She felt the same terror she had as a child when, alone in her room at night with the candle out, colossal faces seemed to advance on her from the corners of the room.1 In the dark world Fuller now inhabited, however, people lied, waged war, and died. Fearing her own death, Fuller had shared part of her secret with Emelyn before the Storys left for Germany, swearing her to secrecy. Fuller said that she and Ossoli had married and that they had a child. As evidence, Margaret showed Emelyn a document “given by the priest who married them, saying that Angelo Eugene Ossoli was the legal . . . heir of whatever title and fortune should come to his father.” Emelyn asked no questions but promised that, if Ossoli and Margaret died in the revolution, she would get Angelino and the documents to America and into the care of Fuller’s mother and her friend Caroline Tappan.2 Sensing French deception, Fuller correctly assessed that the French were merely “amusing” themselves that May when they sent Ferdinand-Marie de Lesseps to Rome as minister plenipotentiary to arrange a peace agreement with the Republican government. During a twenty-day armistice made possible by de Lesseps’s The Fall of Rome 385 386 apocalyptic dreams and fall of rome well-intended negotiations, Mazzini and the republicans trustingly released hundreds of French soldiers, a goodwill gesture ironically seen in Paris as an insult. Fuller thought the republicans dangerously naive. She saw that the French were playing a game with the Romans: pretending to protect the republicans, the French were cleverly leading them to their destruction.3 Unaware of Louis Napoleon’s strategy, de Lesseps on 31 May presented the republicans with a plan that allowed the French to occupy the Roman territory to defend it against other invading armies. In return the French would not contest the Romans’ right to choose their form of government. De Lesseps’s proposal, however, was hollow. On the same day that he made another and still more liberal offer, one that the Romans accepted, Oudinot denounced de Lesseps’s pledges and the latter was recalled to Paris. With the malaria season fast approaching and both Spanish and Austrian troops threatening to move on Rome, Oudinot was eager to act. During the truce he had situated his troops in a commanding position atop one of the hills dominating Rome. On 1 June, the day de Lesseps sailed for France, Oudinot—who now commanded thirty thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, as well as an ample supply of field artillery, howitzers, and mortars—announced in writing his intention to attack the city...

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