The Betrothed / From the Italian of Alessandro Manzoni

by Alessandro Manzoni

The most entire self-devotion was especially conspicuous among the clergy; at the lazarettos, in the city, their assistance was always at hand; they were found, wherever there was suffering, always in attendance on the sick and the dying; very often languishing and dying themselves: with spiritual, they bestowed, as far as they could, temporal succour. More than sixty clergymen in the city alone died from the contagion, which was nearly eight out of nine.

Frederick, as might be expected, was an example to all; after having seen all his household perish around him, he was solicited by his family, by the first magistrates, and by the neighbouring princes, to fly the peril, but he rejected their advice and their solicitations with the same firmness which induced him to write to the clergy of his diocese:—“Be disposed to abandon life rather than these sufferers, who are your children, and your family; go with the same joy into the midst of the pestilence, as to a certain reward, since you may, by these means, win many souls to Christ.” He neglected no precaution compatible with his duty: he even gave instructions to his clergy on this point; but he betrayed no anxiety, nor did he even appear to perceive danger, where it was necessary to incur it, in order to do good. He was always with the ecclesiastics, to praise and direct the zealous, and to excite the lukewarm; he visited the lazarettos to console the sick, and encourage those who assisted them; he travelled over the city, carrying aid to the miserable who were sequestered in their houses, stopping at their doors and under their windows, to listen to their complaints, and to give them words of consolation and encouragement. Having thus thrown himself into the midst of the contagion, it was truly wonderful that he never was attacked by it.

In seasons of public calamity, when confusion takes the place of order, we often behold a display of the sublimest virtue, but more frequently, alas! an increase of vice and crime. Instances of the latter were not wanting during the present unhappy period. The profligate, spared by the plague, found in the common confusion, and in the slackening of the restraints of law, new occasions for mischief, and new assurances of impunity. And further, power itself had passed into the hands of the boldest among them. There were scarcely found for the functions of monatti and apparitori any, but those over whom the attraction of rapine and licence had more sway than dread of the contagion. Strict rules had been prescribed to them, and severe penalties threatened for infringing them, which had some power for awhile; but the number of deaths, and the increasing desolation, and the universal alarm, soon relieved them from all superintendence, and they constituted themselves (the monatti in particular) the arbiters of every thing. They entered houses as masters and enemies; and, not to mention their robberies, and the cruel treatment which those unhappy persons experienced whom the plague condemned to their authority, they applied their infected and criminal hands to those in health, threatening to carry them to the lazaretto, unless they purchased their exemption with money. At other times they refused to carry off the dead bodies already in a state of putrefaction, without a high price being paid them; it is even said, that they designedly let fall from their carts infected clothing, in order to propagate the infection from which their wealth was derived. Many ruffians, too, assuming the garb of these wretches, carried on extensive robberies in the houses of the sick, dying, and helpless.

In the same proportion as vice increased, folly increased; the foolish idea was again revived of poisonings; the dread of this fantastic danger beset and tormented the minds of men more than the real and present danger. “While,” says Ripamonti, “the heaps of dead bodies lying before the eyes of the living made the city a vast tomb, there was something more afflicting and hideous still—reciprocal distrust and extravagant suspicion; and this not only between friends, neighbours, and guests; but husbands, wives, and children, became objects of terror to one another, and, horrible to tell! even the domestic board and the nuptial bed were dreaded as snares, as places were poison might be concealed.”

Besides ambition and cupidity, the motives commonly attributed to the poisoners, it was imagined that this action included an indefinable, diabolical voluptuousness of enjoyment, an attractiveness stronger than the will. The ravings of the sick, who accused themselves of that which they had dreaded in others, were considered as so many involuntary revelations, which rendered belief irresistible.

Among the stories recorded of this delirium, there is one which deserves to be related, on account of the extensive credence it obtained.

It was said that on a certain day, a citizen had seen an equipage with six horses stop in the square of the cathedral. Within it was a person of a noble and majestic figure, dark complexion, eyes inflamed, and lips compressed and threatening. The spectator being invited to enter the carriage, complied. After a short circuit, it made a halt before the gate of a magnificent palace. Entering it he beheld mingled scenes of delight and horror, frightful deserts and smiling gardens, dark caverns and magnificent saloons. Phantoms were seated in council. They showed him large boxes of money, telling him he might take as many of them as he chose, provided he would accept at the same time a little vase of poison, and consent to employ it against the citizens. He refused, and in a moment found himself at the place from which he had been taken. This story, generally believed by the people, spread all over Italy. An engraving of it was made in Germany. The Archbishop of Mayence wrote to Cardinal Frederick, asking him what credence might be attached to the prodigies related of Milan. He received for answer, that they were all idle dreams.

The dreams of the learned, if they were not of the same nature as those of the vulgar, did not exceed them in value; the greater part beheld the forerunner and the cause of these calamities, in a comet which appeared in 1628, and in the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Another comet that appeared in June in the same year announced the poisonous anointings. All writings were ransacked that contained any passages respecting poisons; amongst the ancients, Livy was cited, Tacitus, Dionysius, even Homer and Ovid were searched. Among the moderns, Cesalpino, Cardan, Grevino, Salio, Pareo Schenchio, Zachia, and lastly the fatal Delrio, whose Disquisitions on Magic became the text book on such subjects, the future rule, and, in fact, the powerful impulse to horrible and frequent legal murders.

The physicians yielded to the popular belief, and attributed to poison and diabolical conjurations the ordinary symptoms of the malady. Even Tadino himself, one of the most celebrated physicians of his day, who had witnessed the entrance of the disorder, anticipated its ravages, studied its symptoms, and admitted it to be the plague, even he, such is the strange perversity of human reason, drew from all these facts an argument in proof of the dissemination of some subtle poison, by means of ointments. Nor was the enlightened Cardinal Frederick himself altogether uninfected by the general mania. In a small tract of his on the subject in the Ambrosian Library, he says, “Of the mode of compounding and dispensing these ointments, various statements have been made, some of which we hold for true, while others appear imaginary.”

On the other hand, Muratori tells us, that he had met with well-informed persons in Milan, whose ancestors were decidedly convinced of the absurdity of this widely spread and extraordinary error, but whose safety rendered it imperative on them to keep their sentiments on the subject to themselves.