CHAPTER IV.
Girardi was a native of Turin; in which city his progenitors had established a considerable manufactory of arms. From time immemorial, Piedmont has afforded a medium for the transmission of opinions and merchandise from Italy to France, and a medium for the transmission of merchandise and opinions from France to Italy; some portion of each, of course, being detained on the road. The breezes of France had breathed on Girardi’s father, who was a philosopher, a reformer, a disciple of Voltaire: the breezes of Italy upon his mother, who was a zealot to the utmost extent of bigotry. The boy, loving and respecting both parents, and listening to both with equal confidence, participating in both their natures, became, of necessity, an amphibious moralist and politician. A republican, as well as a devotee, he was incessantly projecting the union of Liberty and Religion—a holy alliance which he purposed to accomplish after a manner of his own. For Girardi was but twenty; and at that period, people were young at twenty years of age.
The enthusiastic youth was soon compelled to give pledges on both sides. The Piedmontese nobility retained certain nobiliary privileges—such as an exclusive right to appear in a box at the theatre, or to dance at a public ball; and dancing was held to be an aristocratic exercise, in which the middle classes must content themselves with the part of spectators.
At the head of a band of young people of his own age, Giacomo Girardi chose, however, one day to infringe the national rule established by his betters; and at a public ball, headed a quadrille of untitled dancers, in the very face of the aristocratic portion of the assembly. The patrician dancers, indignant at the innovation, would fain have put a stop to the attempt; but vociferous cries of “Amusement for all alike—dancing for high and low,” were raised by the plebeians; and to this outbreak of sedition succeeded other cries of a liberal nature. In the tumult that ensued, twenty challenges were given and refused, not from cowardice, but pride; and the imprudent Giacomo, carried away by the impetuosity of his age and character, ended with inflicting a blow upon the proudest and most insolent of his adversaries.
The unpremeditated insult proved of serious moment. The influential family of San Marsano swore that it should not pass unpunished; the knights of St. Maurice, of the Annunciation, all the chivalry and nobility of the country (which an infringement of privilege is sure to render unanimous), affected to resent the offence, both individually and collectively. At his father’s suggestion, the young man took refuge with one of his relations, vicar of a small village in the principality of Masserano, in the environs of Bielle, and, in consequence of his flight, Girardi was condemned, as contumacious, to five years’ banishment from Turin.
The dignity to which the whole business was rashly elevated by all this notoriety, investing a boyish affray with the importance of a conspiracy, imparted considerable consequence to Giacomo Girardi in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen. Some saluted him as champion of the liberties of the people; others as one of those dangerous innovators who still dreamed of restoring the independence of Piedmont; but while, at the court of Turin, the insolent chastiser of nobility was denounced as a leading member of the democratic faction, the poor little partisan was quietly ministering to the performance of a village mass, after the fervent fulfilment of his own religious duties!