The Betrothed / From the Italian of Alessandro Manzoni

by Alessandro Manzoni

This man was the celebrated Ambrose Spinola, who died a few months after, and during this very war which he had so much at heart,—not in the field, but in his bed, and through grief and vexation at the treatment he experienced from those whose interests he had served. History has loudly extolled his merits; she has been silent upon his base inhumanity in risking the dissemination of that worst of mortal calamities, plague, over a country committed to his trust.

But that which diminishes our astonishment at his indifference is the indifference of the people themselves, of that part of the population which the contagion had not yet reached, but who had so many motives to dread it. The scarcity of the preceding year, the exactions of the army, and the anxiety of mind which had been endured, appeared to them more than sufficient to explain the mortality of the surrounding country. They heard with a smile of incredulity and contempt any who hazarded a word on the danger, or who even mentioned the plague. The same incredulity, the same blindness, the same obstinacy, prevailed in the senate, the council of ten, and in all the judicial bodies. Cardinal Frederick alone enjoined his curates to impress upon the people the importance of declaring every case, and of sequestrating all infected or suspected goods. The Tribunal of Health, prompted by the two physicians, who fully apprehended the danger, did take some tardy measures; but in vain. A proclamation to prevent the entrance of strangers into the city was not published until the 29th of November. This was too late; the plague was already in Milan.

It must be difficult, however interesting, to discover the first cause of a calamity which swept off so many thousands of the inhabitants of the city; but both Tadino and Ripamonti agree that it was brought thither by an Italian soldier in the service of Spain, who had either bought or stolen a quantity of clothes from the German soldiers. He was on a visit to his parents in Milan, when he fell sick, and, being carried to the hospital, died on the fourth day.

The Tribunal of Health condemned the house he had lived in; his clothes and the bed he had occupied in the hospital were consigned to the flames. Two servants and a good friar, who had attended him, fell sick a few days after; but the suspicions from the first entertained of the nature of the malady, and the precautions used, prevented its extension for the present.

But in the house from which the soldier had been taken there were several attacked by the disease; upon which all the inhabitants of it were conducted to the lazaretto, by order of the Tribunal of Health.

The contagion made but little progress during the rest of this year and the beginning of the following. From time to time there were a few persons attacked, but the rarity of the occurrence diminished the suspicion of the plague, and confirmed the multitude in their disbelief of its existence. Added to this, most of the physicians joined with the people in laughing at the unhappy presages and threatening opinions of the smaller number of their brethren: the cases that did occur they pretended to explain upon other grounds; and the account of these cases was seldom presented to the Tribunal of Health. Fear of the lazaretto kept all on the alert; the sick were concealed, and false certificates were obtained from some subaltern officers of health, who were deputed to inspect the dead bodies. Those physicians, who, convinced of the reality of the contagion, proposed precautions against it, were the objects of general animadversion. But the principal objects of execration were Tadino and the senator Settala, who were stigmatised as enemies of their country, men whose best exertions had been directed towards mitigating the severity of the coming mischief. Even the illustrious Settala, the aged father of the senator, whose talents were equalled by his benevolence, was obliged to take refuge in a friend’s house from the popular fury, because he had constantly urged the necessity of precautionary measures.

Towards the end of the month of March, at first in the suburb of the eastern gate, then in the rest of the city, deaths, attended by singular symptoms, such as spasms, delirium, livid spots and buboes, began to be more frequent. Sudden deaths, too, were frequent, without any previous illness. The physicians still perversely held out; but the magistracy were aroused. The Tribunal of Health called on them to enforce their directions; to raise the requisite funds for the growing expenses of the lazaretto, as well as the helpless poor. The malady advanced rapidly. In the lazaretto all was confusion, bad arrangement, and anarchy. In their difficulty on this point the Tribunal had recourse to the capuchins, and conjured the father provincial to give them a man capable of governing this region of desolation. He offered them Father Felice Casati, who enjoyed a high reputation for charity, activity, and kindness of disposition, added to great strength of mind, and as a companion to him, Father Michele Pozzobonelli, who, although young, was of a grave and thoughtful character. They were joyfully accepted, and on the 30th of March they entered on their duties. As the crowd in the lazaretto increased, other capuchins joined them, willingly performing every office both of spiritual and of temporal kindness, even the most menial; the Father Felice, indefatigable in his labours, watched with unceasing and parental care over the multitude. He caught the plague, was cured, and resumed his duties even with greater alacrity. Most of his brethren joyfully sacrificed their lives in this cause of afflicted humanity.

Not being able longer to deny the terrible effects of the malady, which had now reached the family of the physician Settala, and was spreading its ravages in many noble families, those medical men who had been incredulous were still unwilling to acknowledge its true cause, which would have been a tacit condemnation of themselves; they therefore imagined one entirely conformable to the prejudices of the time. It was at that period a prevailing opinion in all Europe, that enchanters existed, diabolical operators, who at this time conspired to spread the plague, by the aid of venomous poisons and witchcraft. Similar things had been affirmed and believed in other epidemics; particularly at Milan, in that of the preceding century. Moreover, towards the end of the preceding year, a despatch had arrived from King Philip IV. giving information that four Frenchmen, suspected of spreading poisons and pestilential substances, had escaped from Madrid, and ordering that watch should be kept to ascertain if by chance they had arrived at Milan.

The governor communicated the despatch to the senate, and the Tribunal of Health. It then excited no attention; but when the plague broke out, and was acknowledged by all, this intelligence was remembered, and it served to confirm the vague suspicion of criminal agency: two incidents converted this vague suspicion into conviction of a positive and real conspiracy. Some persons who imagined they saw, on the evening of the 17th of May, individuals rubbing a partition of the cathedral, carried the partition out of the church in the night, together with a great quantity of benches. The president of the senate, with four persons of his tribunal, visited the partition, the benches, and the basins of holy water, and found nothing which confirmed the ridiculous suspicion of poison. However, to satisfy the disturbed imaginations of the populace, it was decided that the partition should be washed and purified. But the incident became a text for conjecture to the people; it was affirmed, that the poisoners had rubbed all the benches and walls of the cathedral, and even the bell-ropes.

The next morning a new and more strange and significant spectacle struck the wondering eyes of the citizens. In all parts of the city the doors of the houses and the walls were plastered with long streaks of whitish yellow dirt, which appeared to have been rubbed on with a sponge. Whether it was a wicked pleasantry to excite more general and thrilling alarm, or that it had been done from the guilty design of increasing the public disorder; whatever was the motive, the fact is so well attested, that it cannot be attributed to imagination. The city, already alarmed, was thrown into the utmost confusion; the owners of houses purified all infected places; strangers were stopped in the streets on suspicion, and conducted to prison, where they underwent long interrogatories which naturally ended in proving none of these absurd and imaginary practices against them. The Tribunal of Health published a decree, offering a reward to whomsoever should discover the author or authors of this attempt; but they did this, as they wrote to the governor, only to satisfy the people and calm their fears,—a weak and dangerous expedient, and calculated to confirm the popular belief.