Page:Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir).djvu/97

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IN MEMORIAM
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of a change, and leaves her now as desolate in her widowhood as she was happy in her marriage. This young lady was the daughter of the brave General Farquharson, one of the time-honoured veterans of the Anglo-Indian Army, and the niece of Sir James Outram, a man of no mean fame in our contemporary annals. The Austrian nobleman and the young Scotch girl were affianced at Verona in 1847, but, owing to the various complications occasioned by the impending revolutionary outbursts then threatening Europe, were not married till the spring of 1851, when the Baron von Hügel was Austrian Minister at Florence.

Many had been the trials and vicissitudes of the preceding years. Events which no loyal-hearted man or true patriot, whatever his line of politics might be, could witness unmoved, determined the Baron von Hügel to abandon the studious pursuits and pleasant leisure of his beloved villa, and to throw himself again into the business and turmoil of the world. He accordingly took up his residence at Vienna, and entered with energy and zeal into all the agitating political affairs of that eventful period. His fidelity towards those whom he had once admitted to his friendship was one of his most striking characteristics, and he had many opportunities during his long life of proving that his chivalrous ideas on this point were no mere theory. When Prince Metternich, in 1848, was threatened with danger and death by an infuriated mob, he rescued him from their hands at the imminent peril of his life, and drove him, concealed in his own carriage, with calm courage at a foot’s pace through crowds clamouring for his blood, who never suspected the presence of the ex-Minister in an equipage which manifested so little haste. From the 13th of March, for more than a month, they were in daily, hourly danger—they remained for days in various places

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