The Betrothed - A. Manzoni E-Book

Alessandro Manzoni

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 1253

Beschreibung

Alessandro Manzoni (Milan, March 7, 1785 — Milan, May 22, 1873) was an Italian writer and poet, one of the most important figures in the literature of his country. Manzoni composed his masterpiece, "I Promessi Sposi" ("The Betrothed"), between 1821 and 1840. The work "The Betrothed" tells the story of two young peasants who intend to marry but are "hindered" by a local lord, Don Rodrigo, who has a network of agents at his disposal. "The Betrothed" is a historical novel that cannot be met with indifference.

Leseprobe

Alessandro Manzoni

THE BETROTHED

Original Title:

“I Promessi Sposi”

Contents

PRESENTATION

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

THE BETROTHED

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

PRESENTATION

Alessandro Manzoni

1785 - 1873

Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan on March 7, 1785, into an old family of feudal lords. Raised in Milan, he moved to Paris in 1805 to join his mother, where he became acquainted with the ideas and principles of Voltaire, significantly influencing his early works and imbuing them with anti-clerical and Jacobin tendencies.

In 1808, Manzoni married Henriette-Louise Blondel, the daughter of a Swiss Protestant banker. Her conversion to Catholicism in 1810 prompted Manzoni to reconcile with the Church. From this point, his life was marked by a profound commitment to religion, patriotism—he was a fervent supporter of the Italian unification movement—and literature.

Manzoni's most prolific period of creative writing occurred between 1812 and 1827. During this time, he wrote his masterpiece, "The Betrothed" ("I Promessi Sposi"), published in 1827. This novel is considered one of the greatest works of Italian literature and played a crucial role in developing a unified Italian language.

After 1827, Manzoni shifted his focus to linguistic studies, contributing significantly to the standardization of the Italian language. He was a proponent of using the Florentine dialect as the basis for modern Italian, which influenced subsequent generations of writers and scholars. He maintained close friendships with prominent figures such as Tommaso Grossi, Massimo d'Azeglio, and the philosopher Antonio Rosmini.

Manzoni's later years were marked by personal tragedies, including the death of his wife in 1833 and the loss of several of his children. Despite these hardships, he continued to be a central figure in Milanese and Italian cultural life. In 1860, he was appointed senator of the Kingdom of Italy by King Victor Emmanuel II, recognizing his contributions to Italian culture and national identity.

Manzoni spent the majority of his life in Milan, where he passed away on May 22, 1873, after a fall that led to cerebral meningitis. His death was widely mourned, and his funeral was a significant event, attended by numerous notable figures, including Giuseppe Verdi, who composed the "Requiem Mass" in his honor. Manzoni's legacy endures as a towering figure in Italian literature and a pivotal influence on the cultural and linguistic unification of Italy.

The Betrothed

In The Betrothed, Manzoni gives voice and space to two young peasants who wish to marry but are "hindered" by a local lord, Don Rodrigo, who has a network of agents at his disposal, from thugs to the priest, Don Abbondio, a figure of bitter self-degradation, and the lawyer Azzecagarbugli, representative of cynical and cruel violence and legislation serving power.

Abbondio, the counterpoint to Fra Cristoforo, does not perform the marriage of the young peasants because he has been threatened by Don Rodrigo, and the given justification is a legal impediment (a fabrication) communicated in Latin. Clearly, the betrothed do not understand anything but respect the authority of the church and its knowledge. Here lies one of the many issues of the novel.

Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella, as well as Fra Cristoforo, are the positive heroes who face adventures and misadventures in their quest to marry. The plot, which could be reduced to the prohibition of marriage, is, in fact, interwoven with intrigues, historical documentation (it is the great Italian historical novel), typified character portraits, and romances within the romance.

By setting aside the lyrical elements of the epistolary and confessional novel, Manzoni turns to the realistic instances of European narrative from Don Quixote onwards, a behavior that produces a fruitful alternation of registers, ranging from the comic to the satirical and the tragic, thus profiling the Italian bourgeois novel.

The plot takes place between 1628 and 1630, covering a troubled period in Italian history: an obviously non-unified Italy, with Spanish domination in part of the north. A return to the past to speak of the present? Yes, certainly. This operation was also practiced more recently by the Sicilian writer Vincenzo Consolo in his historical novels, such as Retablo.

The Betrothed is undoubtedly a novel that cannot be ignored. Francesco De Sanctis exalted it and made it a symbol of the perfect balance between the real and the ideal, an example and symptom for the critic of a modernization of Italian literature. Since De Sanctis, there have been many interpretations, as precisely presented by Professor Aurora Fornoni Bernardini in the preface to this new translation, creating an elucidative mosaic to better understand Manzoni's work by placing side by side the views of Antonio Gramsci, Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Emilio Gadda, and Umberto Eco. Aurora Bernardini also takes care to bring to the Brazilian reader the "picturesque" history of the translations of this work in Brazil, an important path to also think about the cultural relations between the two countries, just remember that D. Pedro corresponded with and translated Manzoni (the poem Il cinque maggio).

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION{1}

“Historie may be truelie defyned as a glorious Warre against Tyme, inasmuch as it rescueth ye Yeres he had taken captiue, and, quickening euen their dede Corses, passeth them againe in reuiewe and deployeth them in battaille Arraye. But ye illustrious Champiouns who garner up all the Palmes and Laurels in this Arena seize onelie ye most showie and brilliant Spoyles, embawming in inke the mightie Achieuements of Princes and Potentates and high Nobilitie and intertwining with ye shaurp Nedle of their Minde the thredes of Golde and Silke wich forme an endless Embroyderie of Splendide Dedes.

To wich great Arguments and perylous Hightes my feblesse durst not aspire, or to moue about amid ye Labyrinthes of polytical Intrigue and ye brazen Clangours of Warre. Onelie, hauing lerned of certaine memorable euents, albeit they happened to mechanical folk and Personnes of lowe degree, I haue undertaken to preserue ye memorie of them to Posteritie by composing an authentick and playne Accoumpte, or Relacion, of the whole. In wich wil be seen, for all that ye stage is narrow, tragick and most horrible Calamities and scenes of stupendous Atrocitie, with Interludes of vertuous Emprise and angelick Godenesse set ouer againste truelie diabolick Machinacions. And uerilie, forasmuch as this Realme is under the mightie proteccion of His Catholick Majestie, Our Souereigne Lord, that Sonne wich neuer setteth, and aboue it shines with borrowed light that Moone with neuer waneth, ye Kinges owne Vicegerent pro tempore of heroick lineage, and those Starres fixed in ye Firmamaunte, wich are ye ryght noble Senators, and those other worshipful Magistrautes wich represente ye wandering Planets scattering their light in every direccion, — thus forminge a whole glorious Spheare, — other cause can there be none for this our seeinge such a Heauen transformed into a Hei of dark Dedes, Wickednesse and Crueltie, wich rash men cease not to perpetrate, than diabolick Arts and Agencies, seeing that human Malice of itself should not auail to wythstande so many Heroes, who cease not, with Argus’ eyes and Briarius’ armes, to travail for the publick Weale.

For wich cause, in inditing this Narrative of euents that befel no farther back then the springtyde of my owne lyfe, albeit the most part of ye Characters who plays a role therein be now uanished from the Stage of this Worlde, hauing passed under the dominioun of ye Parcae, still weighty consideracions haue moued me to wythholde their Names, to wit their Patronymicks, and to do in likewise with localities, mentioning only the Regions generaliter. And let this be not accoumpted an imperfection in the Narratiue, thus deformynge ye offsprynge of my rude Pen, unlesse such Critick be a uery straunger to all Philosophie. As for its Discyples, they wil easilie perceiue that ye substance of ye Relacion suffereth no lack therebye. Wherefore, inasmuch as nothing is more euidente or undisputed than this, that Names be onelie Accidents puri purissimi....”

“But after I have had the heroic patience to transcribe the story contained in this manuscript, with its scratchings and its half effaced text, and brought it, as we say, to light, will any be found with patience enough to read it?”

This misgiving, having arisen in the throes of deciphering a blot that occurred immediately after this puri purissimi, caused me to suspend my copying and give serious thought to what had best be done. “It is true,” I said to myself, as I idly skimmed over the pages, “that this fusillade of metaphors and petty conceits does not go on so continuously through the whole work. The good secentista wished to exhibit his virtuosity at the start; but then, in the course of the narrative and sometimes for long stretches, the style keeps a much evener and more natural gait. Very true. Still how commonplace, how stiff, how ungrammatical it is! Lombard idioms without end, orthodox expressions used mistakenly, arbitrary syntax, disjointed sentences! Then the way he sprinkles his text with elegant phrases from the Spanish, and, worst of all, his inexorable perversity in lugging in that awful rhetoric of the Introduction in the most sublime and the most pathetic passages of the story, whenever an opportunity offers to excite wonder or induce reflection — those passages, in a word, which call for a little rhetoric, to be sure, but used temperately, with nicety and good taste.

Again, uniting the most contrary qualities with an ability that is marvelous, he succeeds in being at once uncouth and affected within the limits of the same page, the same sentence, the same word. In short, he is infected with the characteristic vice of the writers of his age and country — declamatory bombast, composed of vulgar solecisms and pervaded with outlandish pedantry. On sober reflection, it is, indeed, not a thing to place before readers of today — they are too sophisticated, too surfeited already with this sort of extravagance in composition. It was well, after all, that the happy thought carne to me at the very outset. And so I wash my hands of the ill-omened task.”

But in the very act of shutting up the rubbish in its covers again I was smitten with regret that so beautiful a story should remain forever unknown; because, as a story, it may strike the reader differently, but to me it appeared, as I say, beautiful — very beautiful. “Why,” I thought, “could not I take the series of events as they are given in the manuscript and make the language over?” No reasonable objection occurring to me, this course was forthwith adopted. There you have the origin of the present book, stated with a frankness equal to the importance of the book itself.

But some of those events, as well as certain customs described by our author, to us seemed so extraordinary and odd, to call them by no worse name, that, before crediting them, we thought it well to consult other witnesses. So we set to rummaging through the records of the period, to see if things really went after such a fashion. The investigation dissipated all our doubts. At every step we came across similar happenings, and worse; and, what appeared more conclusive still, we even discovered certain characters, of whom, never having heard of them outside of this manuscript, we were in doubt if they really existed. We shall cite some of these witnesses at need to vouch for certain matters, which, on account of their strangeness, the reader might be disposed to doubt.

But having rejected the language of our author as intolerable, what have we substituted for it? There is the point.

Whoever intrudes to improve upon another’s work without being asked, exposes himself to the liability of rendering a strict account of his own, and in a certain measure contracts the obligation of doing so; and this is a rule, grounded alike in precedent and justice, from which we do not pretend to be dispensed. Nay, to conform to it whole-heartedly, we had proposed enumerating minutely the reasons for our own style of writing; and with this end in view, we never ceased, all the time we were at work, casting about in our minds for the possible and problematic objections that might be brought against our method, with the intention of refuting them all in advance. Nor would our difficulty have arisen here; because (we must avow it in the interest of truth) not one objection presented itself without suggesting a triumphant reply — one of those replies that, I do not say solve the question at issue, but change it into something else. Often even, pitting one objection against another, we left the controversy between them; or else, comparing them attentively and sounding them to the very bottom, we succeeded in discovering and proving that, though apparently contradictory, they belonged to the same class of criticisms and arose from disregarding the data and principles on which judgment should have been predicated; and, yoking them thus in pairs to their own great amazement, we would send off the two of them about their business. Never would author have proved himself right so conclusively.

But (so it is) when we had come to the point of piecing together all these objections and replies so as to bring them into some order, Heaven help us! they made a book of themselves. Seeing which, we set our good intention aside for two reasons, which must certainly commend themselves to the reader: first, that a book gotten up to justify another book — nay, the style of another book — might appear ridiculous; second, that one book at a time is enough, maybe too much.

THE BETROTHED

Chapter I

That particular arm of Lake Como, which, reaching towards the south between two uninterrupted mountain chains, finds its shore-line broken by projecting spurs into a constant succession of bays and creeks, contracts at length quite abruptly and assumes the form and flow of a river between a headland on the right and a goodly expanse of shore-land on the other side. This transition is rendered more sensible to the eye by a bridge, which at that point joins the two banks and marks the spot at which the lake ceases to be and the Adda begins — only to resume, later on, the character of a lake, when the banks recede, permitting its waters to expand and seek the tranquil depths of still other creeks and bays.

The shore, formed by the deposits of three large torrents, slopes away from the feet of two neighboring mountains, one called St. Martin’s, the other, in the Lombardese dialect, the Resegone, from its serrated profile; which does, in fact, give it the appearance of a saw, so that no one, seeing it from in front, as, for instance, from the north wall of Milan, can fail to pick it out by such a mark in that long, far-flung mountain range from the other peaks of more obscure name and less striking aspect. For a good stretch the shore ascends by a gentle, steady slope, then it breaks into hillocks and glens, into level land and acclivities, according to the stratification of the two mountains and the erosion of the water. The border itself, cut into segments by the branching of the torrents, is all gravel and stones; the background is made up of fields and vineyards, studded with communes, with villas and hamlets, and interspersed here and there with groves stretching up into the mountain. Lecco, the most important of these communes and the one from which the region derives its name, lies only a short distance from the bridge on the edge of the lake, — indeed, when this becomes swollen, partly in the lake, — a large town in our own day and in a fair way to become a city.

At the period of the events we are undertaking to narrate this town, even then deserving of consideration, was, in addition, a military post and, in consequence, could boast the honor of entertaining a commandant and the advantage of possessing a permanent garrison of Spanish soldiery, who used to set an example of modest reserve to its damsels and matrons and, on occasion, lay the tokens of their affection on the smarting shoulders of some husband or father; never failing, however, as the summer approached its end, to scatter through the vineyards in order to thin out the grapes and save the peasants some of their vintage toil.

From one to another of these hamlets, and stretching from river-bottom to upland and from hill to hill, ran, and rim still, roads and lanes of varying degrees of roughness and smoothness; now sunken between walls on either side, so that, upon lifting the eyes, one’s regard was met only by a patch of sky and a mountain crag; now raised upon open terraces, whence the vision ranges over prospects always rich and abounding in variety, but more or less expansive as the different views borrow more or less from the vastness of the surrounding scene, and accordingly as this or that detail looms up and dominates the spectacle or fades away and disappears from sight. First one glimpse, then another, and then a long vista of the shimmering expanse of ever-changing water; on one side the lake, closed in at the farther end, or rather, lost in a labyrinthine group of mountains, then gradually broadening between other mountains that unfurl themselves one by one to the view with their image and that of the villages on the shore inverted in the wave; on the other side a short span of river, then lake, then river again, winding its sparkling way likewise among the never-failing mountains until they dwindle in the distance and lose themselves in turn on the horizon. The place from which you contemplate these varied scenes is itself a scene on which to feast the eye. The mountain you are skirting spreads out above and around you, its peaks and crags standing out clear-cut and vivid and showing some change at almost every step, that which at first seemed a single ridge breaking up and unfolding a panorama of ridges, and what appeared recently on the slope proving to crown some eminence; the wildness of the rest of the landscape being softened and its sublimity proportionately heightened by the mild, cultivated beauty of these foothills themselves.

Along one of these lanes, leisurely trudging his way homeward from his daily walk, towards evening of November 7, 1628, carne Don Abbondio, parish priest of one of the abovementioned villages, the name of which, however, any more than the surname of the individual, does not appear in our manuscript either here or elsewhere. He was placidly reciting his office, and from time to time, between psalms, he would close his breviary, marking the place by inserting his right forefinger, then, clasping his right hand in the left behind his back, he would continue on his way with his eyes bent on the ground, his foot spurning against the wall the pebbles which littered his path. Then he would raise his eyes, and, glancing idly around, he would rest them upon that part of a mountain where the rays of the sunken sun, escaping through the opposite cliffs, painted its precipitous sides with large splotches of purple. After reopening his breviary and reading another snatch, he arrived at a bend in the lane where he was wont to raise his eyes from the book and gaze ahead; and thus did he on this day. The road ran on straight for about sixty paces beyond the turn and then forked, like the letter Y, into two byways; that on the right rising towards the mountain and leading to the church, the other going down the valley as far as a brook.

The wall on this side rose no higher than the middle of the pedestrian. The inner walls of the two byways, instead of coming to an apex, were truncated by a shrine, upon which were painted long, wriggly objects which, in the intention of the artist and the eyes of the inhabitants, stood for flames; alternating with which were other objects, defying description, which stood for souls in purgatory — both souls and flames being of the color of brick upon a background which was slate-colored except for occasional scars in the plaster. The priest, upon turning the bend and directing his gaze, as usual, towards the shrine, saw something which he was not expecting and which he would have wished not to see.

Two men were stationed facing each other at the confluence, so to speak, of the two byways, the one sitting astride of the coping-wall with one leg dangling outwards and the other foot planted upon the road, his companion leaning against the high wall opposite with arms folded on his breast. Their garb, their bearing, and what could be distinguished, from the point which the priest had reached, of their features, left no room for doubt as to their character. They wore about their heads a green netting falling in a tassel upon their left shoulder, from under which escaped over the forehead a prodigious tuft of hair. Their mustaches were pointed. A shiny leather belt, from which de-pended a brace of pistols, girdled their waists, and a powder-horn hung like a necklace upon their breast. The hilt of a knife protruded from a pocket of their capacious, loose-hanging breeches, and a great sword hung at their side, its huge guard set with brightly furbished plates of brass arranged in some cabalistic pattern. The first glance sufficed to identify them as members of the class of bravos.

This class, now entirely extinct, was at that time very flourishing in Lombardy, and was even then of long standing. The following excerpts will give to the uninitiated reader some idea of the main characteristics of the institution, of the efforts made to stamp it out and of its stubborn and luxuriant vitality.

As far back as April 8, 1583, His Most Illustrious Excellency, Don Cario of Aragon, Prince of Castelvetrano, Duke of Terra-nova, Marquis of Avola, Count of Burgeto, Grand Admirai and Grand Constable of Sicily, Governor of Milan and Captain General of His Catholic Majesty in Italy, having taken full cognizance of the intolerable misery in which the City of Milan lives and has lived by reason of bravos and vagrants, places them under the ban of the law. He declares and defines that all those shall be comprehended under this ban and shall be reputed as-bravos and vagrants, who, whether aliens or citizens, have no regular trade, or, having one, do not ply the same, but are retained, with or without allowance, by some noble or knight, officer or merchant, to espouse his side or second his quarrel, or even, as there is cause to presume, to work scathe to others. He serves an injunction on all such that they quit the country within the term of six days, threatens recusants with the galley and confers upon all agents of justice the most grotesquely large and unrestricted powers to execute the ordinance. But, on April 15 of the following year, the same noble gentleman, noting that the city is as full as ever of the said bravos, who have resumed their former ways without any amendment of code or diminution of numbers, promulgates another edict still more drastic and striking, in which, among other provisions, he specifies:

That any person, no matter whether he be a Citizen of this town or an alien, who shall appear, upon the testimony of two witnesses, to bear the reputation or notorieties character of bravo and pass currently as such, even in the absence of any proof of criminal complicity, solely on the ground of his being so reputed, without further proofs may by the said judges, and by each severally, be put to the rack and tortured to try his guilt, and that, even though no confession of crime be extracted, he may, nevertheless, be committed to the galleys for the aforesaid term of three years on the sole charge of being commonly reputed and notoriously held as a bravo, as hereinbefore recited. All this, and much more which we omit, because his excellency is deter-mined upon his wish being obeyed by all.

When one hears such brave words, spoken with such assurance and coupled with such commands, from so noble a lord, one would fain believe that all the bravos vanished forever solely at their detonation. But the testimony of another noble, the weight of whose authority and whose titles is no less, obliges us to believe exactly the opposite. This is His Most Illustrious Excellency, Juan Fernandez de Valasco, Constable of Castille, High Chamberlain of His Majesty, Duke of the City of Frias, Count of Haro and Castelnovo, Noble of the House of Velasco and that of the Seven Children of Lara, Governor of the State of Milan, etc. On June 5, 1593, he also having taken full cognizance of the harm wrought and the damage inflicted by bravos and vagrants, and of the evil influence of such persons on the public weal and the administration of justice, enjoins them anew, within the term of six days, to quit the country, repeating almost the same prescriptions and threats used by his predecessor. Then, on May 23, 1598, learning with no small degree of displeasure that the number of that certain class (bravos and vagrants) is daily on the increase, and that nothing but murders, robberies and premeditated bloodshed is heard of them day or night, together with misdemeanors of every other sort, to the which they lend themselves the more readily that they have the aid of their chiefs and abettors to rely upon, prescribes anew the same remedies, but in larger doses, as is wont to be done in obstinate diseases. Let everyone, then, he concludes, scrupulously beware of contravening the present edict, or any part thereof, because, instead of experiencing his excellency’s leniency, he will experience his severity and anger, his excellency being resolved and determined that this warning shall be final and peremptory.

Of a different way of thinking, however, was His Most Illustrious Excellency, Don Pietro Enriquez de Acevado, Count of Fuentes, Captain and Governor of the State of Milan; he was of a different way of thinking, and for good reasons. Being fully cognizant of the misery in which this city and State lives by reason of the great number of bravos who abound in it, and being resolved to extirpate entirely spawn so pernicious, he promulgates, December 5, 1600, a new edict, full, as usual, of dire penalties, with the firm purpose that they shall be carried scrupulously into execution with full rigor and without any hope of mitigation.

We must believe, however, that he did not bring to the task all that hearty good-will which he could muster in engineering intrigues and in raising up enemies against his own arch-enemy, Henry IV; because, on this latter score, history is witness to his success in turning against that king the arms of the Duke of Savoy, whom he caused to forfeit more cities than one, and to his success in drawing the Duke of Biron into a conspiracy and making him pay the forfeit with his head. But as regards that “spawn so pernicious” of bravos, certain it is that on September 22, 1612, it was still germinating. On this date His Most Illustrious Excellency, Don Giovanni de Mendozza, Marquis of La Hynojosa, Gentleman, etc., Governor, etc., thought seriously about their extermination. To this end he sent to Pandolfo and Marco Tullio Malatesti, printers to the royal household, the usual edict, revised and enlarged, to be printed to the undoing of the bravos. They lived, however, to have the same blows, and worse, dealt them on December 24, 1618, by His Most Illustrious Excellency, the noble Don Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, Duke of Feria, etc. These not proving fatal either, His Most Illustrious Excellency, the noble Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova, under whose administration took place the afternoon walk of Don Abbondio, found himself obliged to re-revise and republish the customary edict against bravos on October 5, 1627, that is, one year, one month and two days before that memorable event.

Nor was this last of publishing; but we feel dispensed from mentioning the succeeding ones as falling outside the period of our story. We shall make only passing mention of one of February 13, 1632, in which His Most Illustrious Excellency, the Duke of Feria, Governor for the second time, informs us that the most disgraceful crimes are traceable to those who go by the name of bravos. This much suffices to assure us that, at the time with which we are dealing, bravos really existed.

That the two already described were on the wait for someone was entirely obvious; what pleased Don Abbondio still less was the conviction forced on him by their actions that that someone was he. For at his appearance they had exchanged glances, lifting their heads with a movement which told him that both had said in unison, “Tis he.” The one in the straddling posture had arisen, drawing his leg up on the road, the other had detached himself from the wall, and both started in his direction. Keeping his breviary open before him all the while, he looked out from under his eyebrows to keep a watch on their movements; and, seeing them coming up to him, he was assailed by a thousand thoughts at once. He inquired hurriedly of himself whether between him and the bravos the road opened anywhere to the right or left; and he remembered promptly that it did not.

He examined himself rapidly to see if he had any score with lord lings or avengers; but even in his agitation of mind the consoling testimony of conscience offered him its modicum of reassurance. The bravos, however, continued to approach, their eyes fastened on him. He inserted the first and second fingers of his left hand under his collar, as if to readjust it, and sliding his fingers along his neck, he at the same time craned his head around, screwing back the corner of his mouth and looking out of the tail of his eye as far as possible to see if anyone was approaching; but he saw no one. He shot one glance across the low wall into the fields — no one was there; another, rather more timid, down the road ahead of him — still no one except the bravos. What was he to do? It was too late to turn back, and to take to his heels was the same as saying “Follow me” or worse. Being unable to dodge the danger, he went to meet it; because these moments of uncertainty were by this time so painful that he desired nothing more than to shorten them. Hastening his pace, he recited a verse in a more audible tone, assumed what composure and cheerfulness of countenance he could and made every effort to work up a smile. When he found the two worthies confronting him he breathed a “Now for it,” and halted.

“Your reverence”, quote one of them, fixing him with his eye.

“What is your pleasure?” replied Don Abbondio, raising his own from the book, which remained spread open in his hands as if upon a lectern.

“Your reverence contemplates,” pursued the other, with the boding, angry mien of one who catches an inferior on the point of doing something to be ashamed of — “your reverence contemplates marrying Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella tomorrow.”

“That is to say,” responded Don Abbondio, with a quaver in his voice — “that is to say — Your worships are men of the world and know just how such matters go. The poor priest counts for nothing. They make the muddle themselves, and then — and then they come to us as one would go to demand money of his banker, and we — we are the public’s servants.”

“Well, then,” said the bravo in his ear, but with a tone of solemn command, “this marriage must not take place, neither tomorrow nor ever.”

“But, my good sirs,” replied Don Abbondio, with the bland, insinuating voice one takes to persuade a hothead — “but, my dear sirs, be pleased to put yourselves in my place. If the matter depended on me — you see plainly that it puts nothing in my pocket.”

“Zounds!” interrupted the bravo. “If the point were to be decided by prating, you would have us on the hip. We know, and wish to know, nothing more about it. Forewarned is fore — You understand.”

“But your worships are too fair, too reasonable.”

“Stuff!” this time broke in the other ruffian, who had not spoken thus far. “The marriage must not take place, or” (here a round oath) “he who performs it will not repent, because he will not have the time; and” (here another oath).

“Softly, softly,” resumed the first speaker. “His reverence is a man who knoweth the rules of the world, and we are honest folk who mean him no harm, provided he is discreet. Your reverence, the noble Don Rodrigo, our master, pays thee his sincerest respects.”

This name, to the mind of Don Abbondio, was like the lightning flash that in the highest fury of the night tempest lights up one’s surroundings indistinctly for an instant, while it adds terror to terror. Instinctively he made a low bow, and said: “If your worships could suggest to me ...”

“What! make suggestions to your reverence, who can read Latin!” again interrupted the bravo, with a laugh that came somewhere between uncouthness and ferocity. “It is thy concern. And, above all, let no hint transpire of this warning we have given for thy own good; otherwise, ahem! it would be the same as to perform that little marriage ceremony. Come, what answer dost thou wish us to convey to the noble Don Rodrigo?”

“My respects ...”

“Be more definite.”

“Proceeding — proceeding always from obedience.” And, in pronouncing the words, even he did not know whether he was making a promise or a polite phrase. The bravos took them, or gave evidence of taking them, in their more serious sense.

“Excellent; and good night, reverend sir,” said one of them in the act of departing with his companion. Don Abbondio, who but a few moments before would have given one of his eyes to avoid meeting them, now would have liked to prolong the conversation and the parleying. “Your worships —” he began, slamming shut the book. But they, without giving further ear to him, took the road by which he had come and. went away singing a coarse song which I am loath to transcribe. Poor Don Abbondio remained a moment gaping, like one under a spell. Then he took that one of the two roads which led home, painfully dragging one leg after the other, as if they had been of lead. What the State of the inner man was will be better understood after a word of explanation about his character and the times in which it was his fate to live.

Don Abbondio (as the reader has already perceived) was not of a lion-hearted nature. But from his earliest years it had been borne in upon him that the saddest of plights in those times was to be sans fangs and sans claws and yet not fired with the ambition to be eaten alive. The power of the law offered no manner of protection to the peaceable, unoffending man devoid of other means of making himself feared. Not at all that there was any dearth of laws and of penalties against individual violence. There was, on the contrary, a surfeit of laws. The crimes were enumerated and specified with prolix minuteness; the penalties, wildly extravagant and augmentable, if need be, in almost every instance at the discretion of the lawmaker himself and of a hundred executives; the procedures, framed only with a view to removing from the judge’s way everything which might serve as an obstacle to pronouncing sentence of guilty; as the excerpts we have exhibited from edicts against bravos briefly but faith-fully illustrate. Notwithstanding all this, and in great measure because of it all, these edicts, republished and reinforced from one administration to another, served only to attest exuberantly the impotence of their authors; or, if they produced any immediate result, it was to add greatly to the vexations which the law-abiding and weak already suffered from the turbulent, and to increase unruliness and cunning in the latter.

Immunity from punishment was on an organized basis, and its roots were too deep for edicts to reach, or to be able to remove. Of such a character were asylums, such the privileges of certain classes, in part recognized legally, in part tolerated in sullen silence or assailed with vain remonstrances, but maintained in fact and defended by those classes with the industry of self-interest and the jealousy of punctilio. Now this immunity, to which edicts, while not fatal, were a threat and an affront, would naturally be driven by each threat and each affront to fresh lengths of activity and inventiveness for its self-preservation. This is, in fact, just what happened. The lawless element cast about, upon the appearance of legislation aiming at the suppression of violence, for new expedients out of their stock of very real resources to continue doing what the laws had just prohibited. Their enactment might, on the other hand, prove a continual source of inconvenience and annoyance to the man who went on minding his own business but lacked both the means of self-protection and influence; for, in their effort to have all men under control and to prevent or punish all offences, they simply subjected the private individuals every move to the arbitrary will of magistrates of all possible descriptions. But, did a man take measures before committing his crime to get under cover promptly in some monastery or palace, where police durst not set foot, or did he take no further precaution than to wear a livery which enlisted in his defense the vanity and interested assistance of a powerful family or of a whole clan, he could follow his practices in safety and laugh at the bluster of edicts.

Of those on whom it devolved to enforce their provisions, some belonged by birth to the privileged side and others were the creatures of its power; both had adopted its maxims and clung to them by force of education and community of interest, of habit and imitation, and would have thought a long time before violating them for the sake of a scrap of paper posted in the market-place. As for those entrusted with the immediate task of physically executing the laws, even though they had been enterprising as heroes, obedient as monks and self-sacrificing as martyrs, they would never have been able to compass it, inferior as they were numerically to those whom there was question of subduing and extremely liable to be left in the lurch by those whose behests, in the abstract, or, as we say, in theory, they were carrying out. But, in addition, they were generally the most worthless and degenerate creatures of their age, and their office was held in contempt even by those who had reason to dread it, while their legal title was a byword. It was, therefore, very natural that, instead of risking, nay, of throwing away, their lives in a hopeless undertaking, they should put up their inaction, and even their connivance, for sale to the powerful, and should reserve the exercise of their execrated authority and of the power they might really be said to possess for those occasions in which there was no danger — that is, in oppressing and annoying the law-abiding and defenseless.

The man who contemplates aggression or who is momentarily apprehensive of it, naturally seeks allies and fellowship. Hence the tendency of individuals to align themselves in classes, to create additional classes and to seek each the aggrandizement of that to which he belongs, was in that day carried to its fullest development. The clergy were alert to maintain and extend their immunities, the nobility their privileges and the military their exemptions. Merchants and artisans were banded together in guilds and confraternities, the legal profession constituted a union, and even leeches an incorporated society. Each of these petty oligarchies wielded a certain power that was all its own. In each the individual discovered the advantage of employing in his own interest the strength that comes from unity and in exploiting it according to the weight of his influence and the measure of his adroitness. The more upright availed themselves of this advantage solely in self-defense; schemers and knaves seized on it to carry through some low intrigue to which their own resources would have been unequal and to come off with impunity. The strength of these various associations was, how-ever, very unevenly balanced, and especially in the country the turbulent noble in affluent circumstances, surrounded as he was by his cohort of bravos and a population of peasants habituated by family tradition, or led by considerations of interest or necessity, to regard themselves as the subjects and soldiers of the landlord, exercised a power which any local unit would scarcely have been able to dispute.

Our friend Abbondio, being without birth, without wealth, and more hopeless still without courage, had become sensible almost before reaching the age of discretion that, in such a State of society, he was like an earthen vessel compelled to travel cheek by jowl with vessels of iron. Hence he had most dutifully obeyed his relatives when they wished him to become a priest. Not, in truth, that he worried himself much about the duties and lofty ends of the ministry to which he was consecrating himself. Gaining an easy livelihood and getting into an influential and honored body of men had seemed to him a pair of reasons more than sufficient for such a choice. But no order whatsoever will protect an individual or assume responsibility for him beyond a certain point. None of them will exempt him from committing himself to some course of his own.

Don Abbondio, being perpetually engrossed with the thought of living unmolested, bothered not his head about such advantages as entailed much exertion or some risk on the aspirant. His policy was, mainly, to steer clear of all disputes and to yield in those from which there was no escape. In all the wars which broke out around him, from the contentions then rife between the clergy and the civil authorities, between the military and civilians, between noble and noble, down to altercations between peasants with words as their starting point and blows or dagger-thrusts for their arbitrament, he maintained an attitude of unarmed neutrality. If he found himself absolutely compelled to choose sides between antagonist and antagonist, he sided with the stronger, in a paltering way, however, and contriving to show the other that he was not inimical of his own volition. “Why,” he appeared to say to him, “could not you have prevailed, that I might now be standing on your side of the fence?” Thus, by giving a wide berth to power-ful malefactors, by shutting his eyes to their unpremeditated and passing deeds of lawlessness, by acquiescing obsequiously in those that were more grievous and deliberate. by cajoling the surliest into giving him a smile when he met them in the Street, the poor man had succeeded in passing his three score of years without serious squalls.

It must not be imagined, however, that he lacked his own little share of spleen; and this continued restraint upon his temper, this practice of acceding, right or wrong, to others, these many bitter draughts he had to swallow in silence, would have increased its virulence to the point of impairing his health, had he not been able to vent it occasionally. But in such a big world there were persons, and those not far away, whom he knew perfectly well to be harmless beings, and on these he would now and then pour out the vials of his long-repressed wrath and thus indulge his own inclination to play at tantrums and scold unjustly. He was also a severe critic of those whose rules of conduct differed from his own, when, however, the criticism might be ventilated without any danger, be it never so remote. The vanquished was, at the very least, an imprudent fellow; the slain man had always been a brawler. With the man who had pitted himself against some powerful opponent and come off with a cracked pate Don Abbondio could always pick on some fault to find — which, moreover, is not a difficult thing to do, seeing that right and wrong are not separated so cleanly that one side has with it all the right or all the wrong. But above all, he declaimed against those of his confrères who at their own risk took up the cudgels for some poor victim of persecution against his powerful oppressor. This he used to call a wanton quest of trouble and a wishing to take the humps off camels’ backs, and he would add with severity that it was entangling one’s self in secular things to the prejudice of the dignity of the sacred ministry. Against such he inveighed, always, however, in the absence of a third party or in a very small group, with so much the more vehemence as they were known to be less given to resentment in matters affecting themselves personally. He had a favorite saying, which was always for him the last word in discoursing on such matters, that an honest Citizen who minds his own business and keeps his place gets into no scrapes.

Let my five-and-twenty readers now try to imagine how the poor man must have been affected by the incidents we have related. What with the fright he had taken of those hideous faces and ominous words, the threats he had received from a noble who was known not to threaten in vain, the sudden ruin of his quiet plan of life, built up at the price of so many years of study and patience, the predicament out of which no door seemed to open, the bowed head of Don Abbondio was in a whirl indeed. “If Renzo,” he mused, “could be made to go his way in peace by a simple ‘No,’ what harm? But he will want some reason. And what reason have I to give, in the name of Heaven? Hm-m-m-m. There is another Tartar for you; mild as a lamb as long as he is left alone, but attempt to cross him, and — Ugh! And with his head turned, besides, about that Lucia — as lovelorn as — Silly young fools! For the lack of something better to do, they must fall in love and go a-marrying, and never a thought beyond. Little do they care how much anguish a respectable poor man suffers on their account. Alack! alack! I’d like to know what right that twain of horrors had to plant themselves right in my path and take me to task. How do I come into it? Is it I who would be married? Why did they not go instead to speak with? Hah! Just see, now! What an unlucky mortal I am, that the right thing to do always occurs to me five minutes after the occasion has gone by. Now, if I had only thought of suggesting that they betake their embassy to!”

But, at this stage, he became aware that these regrets for not having instigated and abetted wrongdoing were too unconscionably wicked in him, and he directed the full content of his angry thoughts against the one who was coming thus to rob him of his peace. He did not know Don Rodrigo except by sight and by reputation, nor had he ever dealt with him further than to cringe, hat in hand, to the ground on the few occasions when he had met him on the road. He had, more times than one, to defend that noble’s reputation against those who, between sighs, raised their eyes to heaven and, with bated breath, cursed some of his doings. He had said a hundred times that he was an estimable nobleman. But in that moment he called him in his own heart all the names which he had never heard others apply without cutting them short with a “Fie-on-you! ”With his mind in a tumult of such thoughts he reached the door of his house in the lower end of the hamlet, and, hurriedly thrusting the key, which he was holding in his hand, into the lock, he opened and went in, drawing the bolt carefully afterwards. Immediately, in his impatience for trustworthy companionship, he called out: “Perpetua! Perpetua!” advancing at the same time towards the chamber where she was certain to be, laying the cloth for the evening meal. Perpetua, as everyone perceives, was Don Abbondio’s housekeeper; a devoted and faithful servant, who knew how to obey or to make herself obeyed, as occasion required, and could, at the proper time, bear with her master’s grumblings and crotchets or make him in turn bear with her own; which latter were daily becoming more frequent, seeing that she had already passed the canonical age of forty without marrying — in consequence, as she herself told it, of having re-fused all the suitors who had sought her hand, or, as her friends said, of her never having found an old shoe to pair up with.

“I am coming,” she replied, setting down in its accustomed place on the desk the measure of Don Abbondio’s favorite wine and starting slowly in his direction. But she had not reached the threshold of the door when he carne in, with such a heavy step, with his brow so beclouded and his countenance so perturbed, that it would not have needed eyes so keen as Perpetua’s to discover that something altogether unusual had happened.

“Mercy on us! What is wrong, master?”

“Nothing, nothing,” replied Don Abbondio, sinking breathless into his armchair.

“How? Nothing? And is it I you would have think so? Upset as your reverence is? Something most untoward hath happened.”

“Peace! in Heaven’s name! When I say it is nothing, either it is nothing, or it is something I may not tell.”

“That you may not tell even to me? And who will look after your reverence’s health, then? Who will lend you advice? ...”

“Alack! Will you hold your tongue? And leave off setting the table. Give me a glass of wine.”

“And your reverence would hold that nothing is wrong!” said Perpetua, filling the glass and keeping hold of it as if she would relinquish it only in reward for the confidences that were so slow in coming.

“Give here! Give here!” said Don Abbondio, taking the glass away, from her with a hand none too steady and emptying it at one gulp, as if it had been so much medicine.

“Then your reverence would see me going around perforce inquiring what hath happened to my master?” insisted Perpetua, standing confronting him with arms akimbo and her glance fastened on him, as if she would draw the secret out through his eyes.

“In Heaven’s name, don’t go gossiping and noise the thing abroad. My — my life’s at stake.”

“Your life?”

“My life.”

“Your reverence well knoweth that, whenever you have told me aught frankly, in confidence, I have never ...”

“Bravo! As, for instance, when ...”

Perpetua perceived that she had struck the wrong chord; hence, quickly changing her tone, “My good master,” she said in melting accents, “I have always been devoted to you; and if now I wish to know more, it is through solicitude, because I would fain be of assistance to you, give you good advice, cheer you ...”

The fact is that Don Abbondio was probably as anxious to be unbosomed of his painful secret as Perpetua was to learn it. Hence, after making an ever-weakening resistance to the increasing violence of her fresh offensives, after making her swear over and over that she would not breathe a word of it, he at length, with much hemming and hawing and condoling with himself, told her his miserable plight. When he carne to the name of the sender of the message, Perpetua had to make another and more solemn oath of secrecy, and when the name had been pronounced, Don Abbondio fell back with a great sigh into the depths of his armchair, raising his hands in an attitude of both command and entreaty. “Now, in Heaven’s name ...”

“His old tricks!” exclaimed Perpetua. “Oh, the scoundrel! the tyrant! the enemy of God and man!”

“Will you hold your tongue! Or would you be my utter ruination?”

“Oh! no one will hear us talking alone here. But whatever will you do, my poor master?”

“See that, now,” said Don Abbondio in an angry tone; “see what fine advice she gives me. She comes and asks me what I shall do. What shall I do? As if she were in straits and it was for me to help her out.”

“Well, I have my poor bit of advice to give; and yet ...”

“And yet, and yet, and yet; let us hear what it is.”

“My advice is that, since everyone sayeth what a holy man our archbishop is, with no end of courage, and that it warms the cockles of his heart when, to uphold one of his priests, he can bring one of those ruffianly nobles to time, I should think, and I do think, that your reverence should write him a good plain letter, telling him the why and wherefore-

“Hold your tongue! hold your tongue! What kind of advice is that to give a poor man? If a bullet were sent through my head (God forbid!), would the archbishop give me a sound headpiece again?”

“Poh! Bullets are not passed about like comfits at a christening. And God help us if these dogs were to bite whenever they barked. And I have always observed that those who have wit enough to show their teeth and hold up their heads command respect; and just because your reverence never asserts himself, we are brought to a pass where everyone cometh (saving your presence) and ...”

“Will you hold your tongue?”

“I´ll hold my tongue directly; and yet there is no doubt that, when people are aware that a man is always ready, at every juncture, to draw in his ...”

“A truce to your shrewishness! Is this the time to preach absurdities?”

“I have said my say now. Your reverence can think it over tonight. In the meantime, do not make yourself ill and ruin your health. Eat a mouthful of something.”

“Yes, I shall think it over,” replied Don Abbondio, muttering to himself. “To be sure, ’tis I shall think it over. I have food for thought.” And rising up, he continued muttering: “No, I´ll take nothing, nothing at all; that’s not what worries me. It’s well I know that I must think it over. But why did it have to befall me of all others?”

“At least swallow this thimbleful,” said Perpetua, pouring it out. “Your reverence knows that it always braceth you up.” “Bah! ’Twill not serve, ’twill not serve, ’twill not serve.”

So saying, he took the light, and, mumbling incessantly: “A fine to-do! for a peaceable man like me! and tomorrow what?” and other similar lamentations, he started up to his room. On reaching the threshold, he turned around towards Perpetua, placed the tip of his finger on his lips, and, saying: “In the name of Heaven!” in slow and solemn tones, withdrew.

Chapter II

We are told that the Prince of Condé slept soundly the night before the battle of Rocroi; but, in the first place, he was tired out, and, in the second place, he had given all the necessary commands and had settled upon his plan of action for the morning. Don Abbondio, on the contrary, only knew as yet that the morrow would be his day of battle; and hence a great part of the night was spent in painful deliberations. To ignore injunction and threats and perform the marriage was a course he would not even consider; and to confide the circumstance to Renzo and determine with him upon some expedient — God forbid! “Let no hint transpire — otherwise — ahem!” had said one of the bravos; and at the sound of that “Ahem!” reverberating through his mind, far from meditating any disobedience to his instructions, he even repented of having prattled to Perpetua. As for flight, there was no place to fly to. And again, there would be awkward situations to meet and questions to answer! At every plan that he rejected the poor man turned over again in his bed. What appeared to him to be by all means the best course, or the least evil, was to gain time and shillyshally with Renzo.

The recollection that the marriage season would close within a few days came pat to his purpose. “If,” he reflected, “I can stave off the stripling for these few days, I shall have a breathing space of two months, and a deal can come to pass in two months.” He pondered the pretexts to bring forward, and although they looked somewhat flimsy, he proceeded, nevertheless, to reassure himself, thinking that his authority would make up for what they lacked in weight, and that his seasoned experience would give him a big advantage against a callow youth. “We shall see,” he said to himself. “He hath a mistress to take thought for, and I have to take thought for a whole skin; I have more at stake, to say nothing of a riper wit. I know not what you are to do for your love-pains, my lad, but I am not going to pay the piper.” His mind being thus brought somewhat to rest by a decision, he was able at length to close his eyes; but such sleep and such dreams as ensued! It was one long procession of bravos, Don Rodrigos and Renzos; a panorama of lanes and cliffs; an unceasing alternation of flying heels and footsteps in pursuit, punctuated by screams and musket-shots.

The first awakening after a disaster or in some perplexity is a very bitter moment. With the first gleam of consciousness the mind falls back upon the customary ideas of the old, tranquil life; but instantly the new State of things bursts rudely upon us and our pain is made more keen by the momentary contrast. After having tasted the anguish of such a moment, Don Abbondio rehearsed his program of the night before, arose and remained fearfully, yet impatiently, awaiting Renzo.