“‘I have always endeavored to do my duty, even at very great inconvenience; but when one’s life is concerned....’
“‘And when you presented yourself to the church,’ said Federigo, in a still more solemn tone, ‘to receive Holy Orders, did she caution you about your life?’.... ‘He from whom we have received teaching and example, in imitation of whom we suffer ourselves to be called, and call ourselves, shepherds; when He descended upon earth to execute His office, did He lay down as a condition the safety of His life? And to save it, to preserve it, I say, a few days longer upon earth, at the expense of charity and duty, did he institute the holy unction, the imposition of hands, the gift of the priesthood? Leave it to the world to teach this virtue, to advocate this doctrine. What do I say? Oh, shame! the world itself rejects it; the world also makes its own laws, which fix the limits of good and evil; it, too, has its gospel, a gospel of pride and hatred; and it will not have it said that the love of life is a reason for transgressing its precepts. It will not, and it is obeyed. And we! children and proclaimers of the promise! What would the Church be, if such language as yours were that of all your brethren?’
“‘I repeat, my Lord,’ answered Don Abbondio, ‘that I shall be to blame.... One can’t give one’s self courage.’
“‘And why then, I might ask you, did you undertake an office which binds upon you a continual warfare with the passions of the world?... Ah, if for so many years of pastoral labors you have loved your flock (and how could you not love them?)—if you have placed in them your affections, your cares, your happiness, courage ought not to fail you in the moment of need; love is intrepid.’”
This discourse, which is much longer than I have quoted, gives us an admirable ideal of the episcopal office, and through the whole of it the contrast between these two natures vividly appears, without any apparent effort on the part of the author to produce it.
In the meantime, Renzo, who has been in hiding under an assumed name, has established secret communication with Agnese, the mother of his betrothed, and is naturally greatly disgusted to learn of Lucia’s vow. Lucia has found refuge at Milan with a distinguished lady, one Donna Prassede, who is a type of the “superior woman”—one of those pestilent, unsympathetic natures, determined to do good to others at whatever violence to their feelings; who feels herself the instrument of Heaven and with a consciousness of innate superiority, and great display of patronage, torments Lucia by denouncing the unworthy outlaw to whom her affections have been engaged.
Up to this point the narrative has traversed scenes common enough to the period with which it deals; but here it takes up the story of one of the most terrible public calamities which history records—the appearance of the plague in Milan. The scenes of the preceding famine are vividly described; the inefficacy of the ridiculous legal remedies by which it was proposed to supply the lack of natural resources; the establishment of the Lazaretto; the war raging in Italy, which distracted the attention of the authorities; and, finally, the invasion of the German army, by which the plague was introduced into the territory of Milan. A historical account is given of the introduction of the contagion, and the various stages of public sentiment in regard to it.
“First, then, it was not the plague, absolutely not—by no means; the very utterance of the term was prohibited. Then, it was pestilential fevers; the idea was indirectly admitted in the adjective. Then, it was not the true nor real plague; that is to say, it was the plague, but only in a certain sense; not positively and undoubtedly the plague, but something to which no other name could be affixed. Lastly, it was the plague without doubt, without dispute; but even then another idea was appended to it, the idea of poison and witchcraft, which altered and confounded that conveyed in the word they could no longer repress.”
There are descriptions of the processions in the streets, the exhibition of the body of San Carlo Borromeo, and of the public rage against the supposed poisoners. But the most vivid part of the description begins when the author again takes up the thread of his story and describes the return of Don Rodrigo from a carousal, where he had excited great laughter by a funeral eulogium on his kinsman, Count Attilio, who had been carried off by the disease two days before. There is a powerful description of the coming on of the fatal malady, on his return, and of the dreams that tormented him in his sleep.