In the month of August the Civic Guard were ordered to prepare for a march to Bologna; and Ossoli, writing to Margaret on the 17th, strongly expresses his unwillingness to be so far removed from her at a time in which she might have urgent need of his presence at any moment. For these were to her days of great hope and expectation. Her confinement was near at hand, and she was alone, poor and friendless, among people whose only aim was to plunder her. But Margaret could not, even in these trying circumstances, belie the heroic principles which had always guided her life. She writes to her doubting, almost despairing husband: "If honor requires it, go. I will try to sustain myself."
This dreaded trial was averted. The march to Bologna was countermanded. Margaret's boy saw the light on the 5th of September, and the joyful presence of her husband soothed for her the pangs of a first maternity.
He was indeed obliged to leave her the next day for Rome. Margaret was ill cared for, and lost, through a severe fever, the ability to nurse her child. She was forced to dismiss her only attendant, and to struggle in her helpless condition with the dishonesty and meanness of the people around her. A _balia_[E] for the child was soon found, but Margaret felt the need of much courage in guarding the first days of her infant's life. In her eyes he grew "more beautiful every hour." The people in the house called him Angiolino, anticipating the name afterwards given him in baptism,--Angelo Eugene.
She was soon to find a new trial in leaving him. Her husband still wished to keep his marriage a profound secret, and to this end desired that the baby should be left at Rieti, in charge of "a good nurse who should treat him like a mother." Margaret was most anxious to return to Rome, to be near her husband, and also in order to be able to carry on the literary labor upon which depended not only her own support, but also that of her child.
Writing to Ossoli, she says: "I cannot stay long without seeing the boy. He is so dear, and life seems so uncertain. It is necessary that I should be in Rome a month at least, to write, and to be near you. But I must be free to return here, if I feel too anxious and suffering for him."