The Betrothed / From the Italian of Alessandro Manzoni

by Alessandro Manzoni

Meanwhile, the council of ten, not silenced by the refusal of the wise prelate, again urged their request for the procession, which the people seconded by their clamours. The cardinal again resisted, but finding resistance useless, he finally yielded; he did more, he consented that the case which enclosed the relics of San Carlos should be exposed for eight days on the high altar of the cathedral.

The Tribunal of Health and the other authorities did not oppose this proceeding; they only ordained some precautions, which, without obviating the danger, indicated too plainly their apprehensions. They issued severe orders to prevent people from abroad entering the city; and, to insure their execution, commanded the gates to be closed. They also nailed up the condemned houses; “the number of which,” says a contemporary writer, “amounted to about five hundred.”

Three days were employed in preparation; on the 11th of June the procession left the cathedral at daybreak: a long file of people, composed for the most part of women, their faces covered with silk masks, and many of them with bare feet, and clothed in sackcloth, appeared first. The tradesmen came next, preceded by their banners; the societies, in habits of various forms and colours; then the brotherhoods, then the secular clergy, each with the insignia of his rank, and holding a lighted taper in his hand. In the midst, among the brilliant light of the torches, and the resounding echo of the canticles, the case advanced, covered with a rich canopy, and carried alternately by four canons, sumptuously attired. Through the crystal were seen the mortal remains of the saint, clothed in his pontifical robes, and his head covered with a mitre. In his mutilated features might still be distinguished some traces of his former countenance, such as his portraits represent him, and such as some of the spectators remembered to have beheld and honoured. Behind the remains of the holy prelate, and resembling him in merit, birth, and dignity, as well as in person, came the Archbishop Frederick. The rest of the clergy followed him, and with them the magistrates in their robes, then the nobility, some magnificently clothed, as if to do honour to the pomp of the celebration, and others as penitents, in sackcloth and bare-footed, each bearing a torch in his hand. A vast collection of people terminated the procession.

The streets were ornamented as on festival days: the rich sent out their most precious furniture; and thus the fronts of the poorest houses were decorated by their more wealthy neighbours, or at the expense of the public. Here, in the place of hangings, and there, over the hangings themselves, were suspended branches of trees; on all sides hung pictures, inscriptions, devices; on the balconies were displayed vases, rich antiquities, and valuable curiosities; with burning flambeaux at various stations. From many of the windows the sequestrated sick looked out upon the procession, and mingled their prayers with those of the people as they passed. The procession returned to the cathedral about the middle of the day.

But the next day, whilst presumptuous and fanatical assurance had taken possession of every mind, the number of deaths augmented in all parts of the city in a progression so frightful, and in a manner so sudden, that none could avoid confessing the cause to have been the procession itself. However, (astonishing and deplorable power of prejudice!) this effect was not attributed to the assemblage of so many people, and to the increase of fortuitous contact, but to the facility afforded to the poisoners to execute their infernal purposes. But as this opinion could not account for so vast a mortality, and as no traces of strange substances had been discovered on the road of the procession, recourse was had to another invention, admitted by general opinion in Europe—magical and poisoned powders! It was asserted that these powders, scattered profusely in the road, attached themselves to the skirts of the gowns, and to the feet of those who had been on that day barefooted: thus the human mind delights itself with contending against phantoms of its own creating.

The violence of the contagion increased daily; in short, there was hardly a house that was not infected; the number of souls in the lazaretto amounted to 12,000, and sometimes to 16,000. The daily mortality, which had hitherto exceeded 500, soon increased to 1200 and 1500.

We may imagine the agony of the council of ten, on whom rested the weighty burden of providing for the public necessities, and of repairing what was reparable in such a disaster: they had to replace every day, and every day to add to the number of individuals charged with public services of all kinds. Of these individuals there were three remarkable classes; the first was that of the monatti: this appellation, of doubtful origin, was applied to those men who were devoted to the most painful and dangerous employment in times of contagion; the taking of the dead bodies from the houses, from the streets, and from the lazaretto, carrying them to their graves, and burying them; also, bringing the sick to the lazaretto, and burning and purifying suspected or infected objects; the second class was that of the apparitori, whose special function was to precede the funeral cars, ringing a bell to warn passengers to retire; and the third was that of the commissaries, who presided over both the other classes, under the immediate orders of the Tribunal of Health.

It was necessary to keep the lazaretto furnished with medicine, surgeons, food, and all the requisites of an infirmary; and it was also necessary to find and prepare new habitations for new cases. Cabins of wood and straw were hastily constructed in the interior enclosure of the lazaretto; then a second lazaretto, a little beyond, was erected, capable of containing 4000 persons. Two others were ordered, but means, men, and courage failed, and they were never completed: despair and weakness had attained such a point, that the most urgent and painful wants were unprovided for; each day, for example, children, whose mothers had perished of the plague, died from neglect. The Tribunal of Health proposed to found an hospital for these innocent creatures, but could obtain no assistance for the purpose; all supplies were for the army, “because,” said the governor, “it is a time of war, and we must treat the soldiers well.”

Meanwhile the immense ditch which had been dug near the lazaretto was filled with dead bodies; a number still remained without sepulture, as hands were wanting for the work. Without extraordinary aid this calamity must have remained unremedied. The president of the senate addressed himself in tears to the two intrepid friars who governed the lazaretto, and the Father Michele pledged himself to relieve in four days the city of the unburied dead, and to dig, in the course of a week, another ditch sufficient not only for present wants, but even for those which might be anticipated in future. Followed by another friar, and public officers chosen by the president, he went into the country to procure peasants, and partly by the authority of the tribunal, partly by that of his habit, he gathered 200, whom he employed to dig the earth. He then despatched monatti from the lazaretto to collect the dead. At the appointed time his promise was fulfilled.

At one time the lazaretto was left without physicians, and it was only after much trouble and time, and great offers of money and honours, that others could be prevailed on to supply their place. Provisions were often so scarce, as to create apprehensions of starvation, but more than once these necessities were unexpectedly supplied by the charity of individuals. In the midst of the general stupor, or the indifference to the miseries of others, occasioned by personal apprehension, some were found whose hands and hearts had ever been open to the wretched, and others with whom the virtue of benevolence had commenced with the loss of all their terrestrial happiness. So also, amidst the destruction of the flight of so many men charged with watching over and providing for the public safety, others were seen, who, well in body and firm in mind, ever remained faithful at their post, and some even, who, by an admirable self-devotion, sustained with heroic constancy cares to which their duty did not call them.