"One question I permit myself to ask of those who have now published
the Life of Sir Richard Burton, which is this, 'Why did they not publish
it during the lifetime of Lady Burton? Who better than she would have
been able to enlighten the world on this point of much importance? Why
publish it now when she is no longer here to speak?'
"Trieste, January 12, 1897,
"PIETRO MARTELANI,
"Formerly Parish Priest of the B.V. del Soccorso,
now Prebenday and Priest of the Cathedral of Triest."[7]
I am further able to state that the gross travesty of Lady Burton's grief
--"her weeping and wailing on the floor," etc., etc.--is the outcome of a
malevolent imagination, from which nothing is sacred, not even a widow's
tears. Lady Burton bore herself through the most awful trial of her
life with quietude, fortitude, and resignation.
And now to turn to the second charge--to wit, that Sir Richard was never
a Catholic at all; from which, if true, it follows that he was in fact
"kidnapped" by his wife and the priest on his death-bed.
If this charge did not involve a suggestion of bad faith on the part of
Lady Burton, I should have ignored it; for I hold most strongly that a
man's religion is a matter for himself alone, a matter between himself
and his God, one in which no outsider has any concern. Burton himself
took this view, for he once said: "My religious opinion is of no
importance to anybody but myself.
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