Chapter III: Part 3

“It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.

“‘You are too hasty, sir,’ she cried. ‘You forget that I have
made no answer. Let me do it without further loss of time.
Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very
sensible of the honor of your proposals, but it is impossible for
me to do otherwise than decline them.’

“‘I am not now to learn,’ replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave
of the hand, ‘that it is usual with young ladies to reject the
addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he
first applies for their favor; and that sometimes the refusal is
repeated a second or even a third time. I am, therefore, by no
means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to
lead you to the altar ere long.’

“‘Upon my word, sir,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘your hope is rather an
extraordinary one, after my declaration. I do assure you that I
am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are)
who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of
being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal.
You could not make _me_ happy, and I am convinced that I am the
last woman in the world who would make _you_ so. Nay, were your
friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find
me in every respect ill qualified for the situation.’

* * * * *

“‘You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin,
that your refusal of my addresses is merely a thing of course.
My reasons for believing it are briefly these:--It does not
appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that
the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly
desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family
of De Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances
highly in my favor; and you should take it into further
consideration that, in spite of your manifold attractions it is
by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be
made you. Your portion is unhappily so small, that it will in
all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable
qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not
serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it
to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the
usual practice of elegant females.’

“‘I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to
that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable
man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed
sincere. I thank you again and again for the honor you have
done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely
impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak
plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to
plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from
her heart.’

“‘You are uniformly charming!’ cried he, with an air of awkward
gallantry; ‘and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the
express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals
will not fail of being acceptable.’

“To such perseverance in wilful self-deception, Elizabeth
would make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew;
determined, that if he persisted in considering her repeated
refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father,
whose negative might be uttered in such a manner as must be
decisive, and whose behavior at least could not be mistaken for
the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.”

But after Collins is persuaded that he is rejected by Elizabeth, he at once makes suit to her friend, Charlotte Lucas, and Charlotte, who has an eye to the main chance, snaps up the foolish clergyman with little ceremony, and, like many another woman under similar circumstances, manages him adroitly and bears patiently and cheerfully her dull life with him at the parsonage.

Elizabeth, while on a visit to her friend at this place, again sees Darcy on several occasions. His manners are constrained; she dislikes him heartily; and it is with the utmost surprise that she listens at last to a confession of love, in which he declares that he has struggled vainly, that his feelings will not be repressed, and in which he speaks most inappropriately of his sense of her inferiority, of the marriage being a degradation, and of the family obstacles which judgment has always opposed to his inclination. She rejects him with indignation, and reproaches him for separating his friend Bingley from her sister, and for his unjust treatment of Wickham. He on his part is astounded at her refusal, and the next morning places in her hand a letter, explaining, with great candor and rather brutal frankness, his motives for his action, and justifying very fully his treatment of Wickham, whose bad character is clearly shown.

It is not long before Wickham elopes with the foolish Lydia, and lives with her in hiding in London, but refuses to marry her. Darcy, without the knowledge of any of the Bennet household, sets about to discover the fugitives, and finally persuades Wickham to marry the girl, to whom he gives a portion sufficient to make her an object of attraction to her unprincipled lover.

These two characters, Darcy and Wickham, are not clearly described when they are first introduced to us, and Elizabeth, the heroine, though she is generally a shrewd observer, makes a serious mistake in estimating their respective merits, a mistake that we would be very likely to make ourselves under the same circumstances.

In the later chapters of the book Darcy overcomes his pride, and Elizabeth her prejudice, Bingley and Jane are again brought together, and the marriages of the two couples form a fitting conclusion for the novel.

Perhaps the character of the Lady Catherine de Bourgh is the most graphically drawn of any in the book. Her rank, her wealth, and her arrogance make her the general adviser of the inferior race of mortals whom she deigns to notice. She criticises every household but her own, resents the expression of an opinion by any one except herself, points out the mistakes of everyone else at the card tables, constantly relates anecdotes of her personal experience, determines what the weather is to be next day, finds fault with the employments of her neighbors and the arrangement of their furniture, detects their housemaids in negligence, impresses upon the young women of her acquaintance that they will never play well unless they practice more, etc., etc., etc. All her hospitality is attended by intolerable dullness and ill-breeding. Her interview with Elizabeth, in which she insolently directs that young woman not to marry Darcy, because she has selected him for her own daughter, is drawn with a masterly hand, and, as might be expected, her conduct turns out to be the very means of reconciliation between those she would keep apart.

In the following letter of condolence sent by Mr. Collins to Lydia’s father, after her elopement became known, the nature of the reverend clergyman appears, unconsciously painted by his own hand far better than it could be characterized by others:

“‘_My dear Sir_:

“‘I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my
situation in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction
you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed
by a letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that
Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely sympathize with you, and
all your respectable family, in your present distress, which
must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause
which no time can remove. No arguments shall be wanting, on my
part, that can alleviate so severe a misfortune; or that may
comfort you under a circumstance that must be of all others
most afflicting to a parent’s mind. The death of your daughter
would have been a blessing in comparison to this. And it is
the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose,
as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of
behavior in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of
indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of
yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own
disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty
of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be,
you are grievously to be pitied, in which opinion I am not only
joined by Mrs. Collins, but, likewise, by Lady Catherine and her
daughter, to whom I have related the affair. They agree with me
in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be
injurious to the fortunes of all the others, for who, as Lady
Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves
with such a family? And this consideration leads me, moreover, to
reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last
November; for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in
all your sorrows and disgrace. Let me advise you, then, my dear
sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your
unworthy child from your affection forever, and leave her to reap
the fruits of her own heinous offence.’

“‘I am, dear sir, &c., &c.’”

While “Pride and Prejudice” is not a book of absorbing interest, it is a very faithful portraiture of life, and a quiet and effective satire on some of the commonest foibles of mankind.

UNDINE
DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE

The fairy world holds among its enchantments no more gracious figure than Undine, whose simple story is filled with unutterable pathos and tenderness.

The Knight Huldbrand meets her in the guise of a young girl at the cottage of a fisherman by whom she had been brought up as a daughter. Beautiful, wayward, mischievous, she falls in love with the handsome knight and testifies her fondness by mad pranks as well as by artless caresses. After they are married Huldbrand learns for the first time that his bride is a water-sprite, belonging to a race more beautiful than mankind, but devoid of an immortal soul, which can be acquired only by marriage with some human being. A great change now comes over Undine; for with her new soul there comes to her all that depth of feeling and suffering which the possession of the priceless gift implies. The scene in which she first reveals to her husband her real nature and tremblingly awaits her destiny at his hands is beautiful in the extreme. The married pair take their departure from the cottage and proceed through the enchanted forest on their way to Huldbrand’s castle at Ringstetten. The water-sprite Kühleborn, the kinsman of Undine, who besets their pathway here and elsewhere and who dissolves into a mountain torrent, is described with that vagueness which is the charm of the supernatural. On the way to Ringstetten, Undine, moved with pity for the proud and imperious Bertalda, who has been cast off by the duke of the country for her unworthiness, takes her home and receives her as a companion and friend. Gradually the love of Huldbrand for his wife wanes, and he becomes enamored of Bertalda; and while Undine’s kinsfolk, the water-sprites, seek to revenge the slights she is compelled to suffer, yet the poor wife, with loving self-sacrifice, protects not only her husband but even her rival from their power. At last, while sailing on the Danube, Huldbrand loads his wife with curses and imprecations, and she is compelled to leave him and join her kindred in the river below. And when, after his marriage with Bertalda, she is required to come back to the castle and be his executioner, she lovingly performs her terrible office with a kiss.

There are some imperfections and inconsistencies in the story, as perhaps there must be in all tales dealing with the supernatural, but the traits which come to this fair creature with the soul bestowed upon her at her wedding, the gentleness, the self-sacrifice and submissive love, are drawn by the hand of a master and painted in colors which genius alone can impart to the creations of fancy.

PETER SCHLEMIHL
ADELBERT CHAMISSO

A German critic of considerable authority speaks of “Peter Schlemihl” as “a faultless work of art, and one of deep import.” It is not necessary to concur in this estimate nor to imagine, as some do, that the shadowless man was a symbol of the author, “a wanderer without a country,” in order to give the book a reasonably high place in literature. No doubt there are autobiographical features in the story, but Chamisso’s own account of its simple genesis is evidently the true one. “I had lost,” he said, “upon a journey, my hat, portmanteau, gloves, pocket-handkerchief, and my entire travelling outfit. Fouqué asked me if I had not also lost my shadow, and we pictured this misfortune to ourselves.” Something out of La Fontaine furnished another incident, and the book was written largely to amuse the children of the author’s friend Hilzig. It is a sort of fairy story dealing largely with the supernatural.

At the garden of a rich gentleman to whom he has brought a letter of introduction, Peter Schlemihl meets a quiet man dressed in gray, who, when anything is desired by the guests, at once takes it out of his pocket. A piece of court plaster, a telescope, a Turkish carpet, a tent, and finally a horse saddled and bridled, are successively produced without anyone showing surprise at these remarkable proceedings or even seeming to know who the stranger is. When Schlemihl retires from the company the gray man follows him and offers him the inexhaustible purse of Fortunatus in exchange for his shadow. Schlemihl, poor man, thinking it a small thing to part with at such a price, sells this humble attendant to the devil, and the rest of the book sets forth the calamities that follow--the pity of the old women, the outcry of the children, the contempt of the men, especially the stout ones who have broad shadows of their own. Schlemihl tries to keep in the shade, shuts himself up in his room with his gold, proposes to have a shadow painted, sends his faithful servant Bendel to get his own back from the gray man, but all in vain. The stranger promises, however, to return “in a year and a day.”

All the splendor procured by Schlemihl’s wealth is as nothing by the side of the evil fate entailed by the loss of his shadow. He is especially unfortunate in love. At first Fanny smiles upon his suit, but falls senseless when the moon rises and casts only a single shadow as the two sit side by side. Then, when he flees to another country, where the people take him for a king and he wins sweet Mina’s heart, his secret is betrayed by Rascal, one of his own hirelings, who robs him at once both of his money and his intended bride.

At the end of the year and the day the gray man appears and offers him back his shadow if he will only subscribe a little obligation to surrender to the bearer his soul after its separation from his body. The argument is cogent. “What sort of a thing is your soul? Have you ever seen it, and what do you think you can do with it after you are dead?” But this time the voice of the tempter is unavailing, for although at first Peter is on the point of yielding when tortured by the sight of his weeping Mina about to be consigned to the arms of the hated Rascal, yet a friendly unconsciousness overcomes him and the contract is not signed.

The poor unfortunate again rides forth into the world, followed by the man in gray, until at last Schlemihl in despair flings away the purse, whereupon his evil spirit departs, leaving him free and light-hearted, although poor as well as shadowless and alone in the world.

He now avoids human society, and having become possessed of a pair of seven-league boots he is astonished to find himself striding over immense tracts of territory in an incredibly short space of time. Now he first clearly sees his appointed destiny. Shut out from the society of his fellows, nature is to be his compensation. The earth is given to him as a rich garden, and science is to be the purpose of his life. He naturally has facilities for investigation possessed by no one else. He strides through all parts of both continents, passing across Behring Straits from Asia to America, but he deplores the fact that New Holland and other islands of the Pacific are still inaccessible to him, and he gazes from the utmost point of land which his seven-league boots will permit him to reach, to the unattainable regions beyond the sea, and deems himself as badly off as if he were still behind the bars of a prison, oppressed as he is with the terrible consciousness that his great work on natural history, embracing only the flora and fauna of the two continents, must still remain a fragment.

He chooses for his hermitage a cave in the Thebais, and when we leave him he is still engaged in the preparation of his great work.

There is an inexhaustible fund of humor in the story. The various excuses given by Schlemihl for the loss of his shadow are certainly grotesque. One was that when he was travelling in Russia it froze so hard that the shadow stuck to the ground; another that a rough man walked so rudely into the shadow that he tore a hole in it and it was sent out to be mended. Another excuse was that it disappeared during a long sickness, with the hair and nails of the hero, and while hair and nails had been restored, the shadow had never come back.

“Peter Schlemihl” is written in a charming style. The vocabulary and the diction are extremely simple. This is perhaps due to the fact that the book was intended for a child’s story, but still more, I think, to the fact that Chamisso being by birth a Frenchman, his diction has something in it of the clear and luminous character of French prose.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
WASHINGTON IRVING

As in painting it is not the huge canvas but the miniature which is most finished and delicate in detail, so in American fiction it is a short story of the simplest type, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which furnishes perhaps the choicest illustration of the perfection of literary handiwork.

The incidents of the tale are meager; the characters are very few. Ichabod Crane, the Yankee schoolmaster, is pretty much all. But with what a master hand are drawn the few lines that portray his grotesque personality! “He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small and flat on top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched on his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow escaped from a cornfield.”

In the matter of style, this little sketch is as near perfection as it is possible to come. The landscape pictures are so lifelike that the reader is flushed by the opulence of the autumn harvests “in which the birds were taking their farewell banquets,” or hushed by the calm brooding over the Tappan Zee, while the schoolmaster jogs along upon his ancient nag to lay siege to the heart and the inheritance of the fair Katrina Van Tassel. The crullers and doughnuts on the table of the Dutch farmer inspire an appetite in the reader almost as keen as that of the pedagogue; and the final catastrophe, when, after the rejection of his suit, the trembling Ichabod falls a victim to the Headless Horseman, overthrown by the pumpkin hurled from the hands of the irreverent Brom Bones, is a climax worthy of the humor of Cervantes himself. Indeed, there are strong grounds for believing that Don Quixote was the model of the lank pedagogue, who, whether he bestrides Gunpowder, or delves in the lore of ghosts and hobgoblins, or shakes himself to pieces in the dance, irresistibly calls to mind the peerless knight of La Mancha. But whether or not Irving borrowed the lay figure from another, he has moulded the cast upon it so perfectly that Ichabod is all his own.

IVANHOE
WALTER SCOTT

The novelist who puts the scene of his story in a place and a time far removed from his own has perhaps this advantage, that he offers to his reader scenes that have the charm of strangeness and novelty; but he suffers from a serious drawback,--he can never interpret the thoughts and conduct of his characters with the same truthfulness, nor in quite the same lively manner as if they were familiar to him by daily contact. For the human interest of his drama he has to rely not so much upon temporary or local characteristics as upon those which are common to all periods and all communities. Indeed, if there be any local color, it is apt to be that of the author’s own surroundings rather than of those in which the story is laid.

In “Ivanhoe,” Scott sought to reproduce the period of Richard I, and perhaps the reproduction is as lifelike as any that could be made, where the materials are so scanty. The novel belongs distinctly to the romantic school, and contains all the usual ingredients of books of chivalry,--knights errant, heroes in disguise, prodigies of valor, maidens in distress, a foul ravisher, a wandering monarch, a drinking friar, etc. These things are pruned of their most evident absurdities, but the story is still quite far removed from probability. The plot is palpably a creation of imaginative architecture, resembling some well proportioned temple or villa, rather than the product of natural development like a landscape or like life itself. In places the author invokes the Saxon Chronicle and other authorities in proof of the credibility of his narrative, but these references themselves show that he is not unconscious of the fact that his story stands in need of extraneous support.

And yet, this artificiality being once conceded, how beautiful is the structure! How fine the material, and how symmetrically it is put together! Sometimes, perhaps, the narrative lags a little; sometimes the descriptions, like those of Cedric’s hall or Athelstane’s castle, are longer than the impatience of the reader cares to tolerate. Yet the great scenes of the drama, how vividly do all these stand forth in our memory! How splendid the stage setting and how well arranged the incidents!

The story opens quietly. Gurth, the swineherd, and Wamba, the jester of Cedric the Saxon, are driving home a herd of swine, when they are overtaken by Prior Aymer and the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert with their train. Then follows the supper scene at Rotherwood, the residence of Cedric, where Ivanhoe, disguised as a wandering palmer, returned from Palestine, visits his father’s home, answers the boasting taunts of the Templar, saves the poor Jew, Isaac of York, and is supplied with armor for the coming tourney.

Next follows one of the most celebrated scenes in literature, the description of the passage at arms at Ashby, in which Ivanhoe, as the “Disinherited Knight,” vanquishes all antagonists and names Rowena, Cedric’s ward, as queen of love and beauty, and where, in the _melée_ on the second day, the “Black Sluggard,” another unknown knight, turns the fortunes of the fray against the Templar.

Perhaps even more admirably constructed are the scenes which follow,--the capture of Cedric, Rowena, Athelstane, Isaac and his daughter Rebecca, by the Norman nobles, and their imprisonment in the castle of Front-de-Boeuf, where they are separated from each other, and where the events which take place simultaneously in different parts of the castle are narrated with great vividness and power. While Cedric and Athelstane are held for ransom, Front-de-Boeuf seeks to extort a vast sum of money from poor Isaac by preparing to roast him alive; De Bracy, a Norman noble, demands the hand of Rowena as the price of her safety and that of Ivanhoe; and the Templar besets Rebecca with his amorous importunities until she prepares to fling herself from the parapet to escape his violence. The interruption of these scenes by a bugle call from without, the demand for the release of the captives made by Wamba, Gurth, the Black Knight, and Locksley, captain of the outlaws, followed by the siege and burning of the castle, constitute perhaps the climax of the story, and are even more impressive than its third great scene, the trial of Rebecca for sorcery, and her deliverance by Ivanhoe, who appears as her champion at the last moment.

Certain episodes are almost as attractive as the main thread of the narrative. For instance, the drinking bout between Friar Tuck and the Black Knight (who turns out to be King Richard) in the chapel in the forest.

There are improbabilities in this work which show us very clearly that it is a creation of the imagination rather than a transcript of observations from actual life. Take, for instance, the conversation between Brian de Bois-Guilbert and the captive Rebecca in the castle. It is safe to say that no knight, however profligate, ever began a love-suit to a maiden with a satirical reminder that her father was then being tortured for money in another part of the castle, in such words as the following:

“Know, bright lily of the vale of Baca, that thy father is
already in the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to
convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon
grate. The venerable Isaac is subjected to an alembic, which will
distill from him all he holds dear, without any assistance from
my requests or thy entreaty. Thy ransom must be paid by love and
beauty, and in no other coin will I accept it.”

And yet, in spite of such defects, the heroism displayed by Rebecca in this particular scene has made it one of the most attractive in the entire story. Rebecca is indeed one of the noblest characters in fiction, and the portrait is natural and human, as well as heroic. Although she was delivered from the stake by her champion, the story ends sadly for her, since the knight whom she loves has become the husband of Rowena. Scott tells us in his preface that he has been censured for this, but he adds, with admirable taste, that he thinks that a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity.

But to my mind the most attractive person in the book is Wamba, the jester. He appears to me in many ways a close imitation of some of Shakespeare’s clowns. His jests are on an average quite as good, and he everywhere awakens our liveliest interest and sympathy, from the hour when he interposes his shield of brawn in front of the Jew at the tournament until the time when he exchanges repartees and songs with the Black Knight on their way through the forest. There is, moreover a strain of pathos in his merriment, and when he enters the castle of Front-de-Boeuf, disguised as a monk, and exchanges his garments with his master, remaining within the castle in expectation of death, the gibes with which he accompanies his sacrifice give to his character something very human, lovable, and withal heroic. Even Shakespeare has hardly given us a better clown.

The resuscitation and the appearance of the Saxon noble Athelstane at his own funeral feast is far from artistic. Scott himself calls it a _tour de force_, and says he put it in at the vehement entreaties of his friend and printer, who was inconsolable at the Saxon being conveyed to the tomb,--an example which ought to be a warning to authors to follow their own judgment rather than that of their friends.

In the crucible of Scott’s imagination moral qualities are sometimes fused together in such manner that the original ingredients are quite undiscernible. Robin Hood and his outlaws become generous heroes, and Friar Tuck, who is in reality a dissolute and hypocritical monk, becomes amiable and attractive. Indeed, this great writer of romance is filled with such ever present optimism and love of honorable qualities, that it is almost impossible for him to draw the picture of a really detestable man. His novels offer the strongest possible contrast to the pessimistic realism of some of the more recent works of fiction.

Men may differ in their estimates of Ivanhoe as a picture of human life and character, but they can hardly differ in their estimate of it as a beautiful piece of poetic imagination.

THE BETROTHED
ALESSANDRO MANZONI

“The Betrothed,” by Manzoni, has not received at the hands of the English or American public that wide celebrity or high rank which it deserves. It is a very great novel. Excepting only “Don Quixote,” and some of the masterpieces of Thackeray, I know of nothing more excellent in the whole range of fiction. There is no artificiality, no sensationalism, no straining after effect; but the story proceeds naturally and even quietly through events of great historic as well as tragic interest, to its consummation.

The scene opens at a village on the shores of the lake of Como, on an occasion when Don Abbondio, the curate of the parish, is stopped on his way home by two “bravoes” of Don Rodrigo, a nobleman of the locality, and warned, upon pain of death, not to celebrate the marriage of Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella, which had been fixed for the following day. The scene is a very vivid one, and the terror of Don Abbondio is set forth in the liveliest manner. He is also warned not to disclose the warning; “It will be the same as marrying them,” says the bravo. But the poor priest is a leaky vessel, and when he grumbles and complains to his housekeeper Perpetua, he can not refrain from relating to her the awful threat. Dreadful are his dreams that night of “bravoes, Don Rodrigo, Renzo, cries, muskets”; and on the next day, when he makes blundering excuses to the bridegroom and tries to overwhelm him with Latin quotations which he can not understand, the truth all comes out, for Perpetua has talked with Renzo about “overbearing tyrants,” and Renzo at last worms the story, and even the name of the “tyrant,” out of the frightened priest.

But the wedding is stopped, and Renzo betakes himself to Dr. Azzecca Garbugli, learned in the law, who treats him encouragingly and confidentially, so long as he thinks he has only a malefactor to defend, quoting terrible edicts with the comforting assurance that he can get him off, until he learns that Renzo has come, not to defeat but to seek justice, and that too against the powerful Don Rodrigo. Then he sends the poor fellow away, and will hear nothing in justification of his suit.

But the unfortunate lovers have a friend in the person of Father Cristoforo, a monk, who in his early life had killed a man in a rage, and devoted the remainder of his days to the humility and repentance of the cloister. He takes it upon himself to visit Don Rodrigo, and in earnest and indignant words remonstrates with the abandoned nobleman, but he is ordered from the house.

And now Agnese, the gossiping mother of Lucia, proposes to accomplish the marriage by craft. The lovers are to make a declaration before the curate in the presence of witnesses. This, it seems, was a method recognized by law. Renzo undertakes his preparations for the scheme; gains access to Don Abbondio’s house through a friend, who comes under pretense of paying rent; but just as they are making the mutual declaration they are interrupted by a great outcry on the part of Don Abbondio, who throws the tablecloth over Lucia’s face and stops the proceedings.

That same night Don Rodrigo has sent his bravoes to abduct Lucia. They steal into the house, but find it empty, and are suddenly startled by the ringing of the bell, which has followed the outcry of Don Abbondio. “Each of the villains seems to hear in these peals his name, surname, and nickname,” and they flee in consternation, while the betrothed betake themselves to the convent of Father Cristoforo, at Pescarenico; and the tumult aroused in the village by these events, admirably pictured by the novelist, at length subsides.

Father Cristoforo sends Renzo to Milan, and the women to a convent at Monza, where Lucia is to find refuge with “the Signora,” a nun of high rank, who has been compelled by her father to assume the veil. The Signora is proud, passionate, unreconciled. Her history, and the schemes by which her consent to a monastic life had been extorted by alternate persecutions and flatteries, are skillfully delineated, as well as her intrigue with Egidio, an abandoned man, living in a house adjoining the convent, which intrigue is followed by the mysterious disappearance of a lay sister who has discovered the crime. But “the Signora” now rejoices at the opportunity of thus sheltering an innocent creature like Lucia, whom she takes under her protection.

Renzo reaches Milan at the time of the breaking out of the bread riots, due to the prevailing famine. The looting and destruction of one of the bake-houses is vividly described, and also the attack upon the superintendent of provisions. Renzo can not keep out of these exciting scenes, and becomes quite a hero, making a speech to the crowd, innocent enough in purpose, but easily construed into sedition by a secret agent of the government who hears it, attaches himself to Renzo, acts as his guide to an inn in the neighborhood, where the innocent young man unlawfully refuses to give his name to the innkeeper, but unwittingly reveals it to his guide; then goes to bed intoxicated, is arrested next morning, escapes from the officers of justice in the midst of the crowd, flees from the city, and does not stop until he has quit the duchy of Milan, crossed the Adda, and taken refuge with his cousin Bortolo in the Bergamascan territory--all of which is followed by proceedings declaring him a dangerous outlaw,--luckily, however, after he is well out of reach.

Through the intrigues of Don Rodrigo, the monk Cristoforo is sent away to Rimini, and the nobleman now betakes himself to the castle of a great lord, whose name is not given, so dreadful were the crimes he was said to have committed. The Unnamed took upon himself the task of kidnapping Lucia from the convent, and for this purpose availed himself of Egidio, who compelled the Signora to betray the girl committed to her keeping and to send Lucia on a pretended message, to be seized, thrown into a carriage, and driven to that lair of robbers, the castle of the Unnamed. But so great are her sufferings, so moving her piteous appeals, that even the heart of the outlaw is touched, and he falters in his desperate scheme. Lucia in her agony prays to the Madonna for deliverance, and, resolving to sacrifice what she holds most dear, she determines to give up her beloved Renzo, and vows to remain a virgin.

A fine description is given of the remorse which steals over the conscience of the desperate malefactor, his despair at the contemplation of a career which is now drawing near its close, with its inevitable termination, and the thought, “If there should really be another life!” He hears again the piteous words of Lucia when she besought him to set her free, “God pardons so many sins for one deed of mercy!”

When the morning breaks after a night of this remorse, he hears the distant chiming of bells; learns of the festival of the people in the neighborhood who were going to meet their bishop, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, and, by a sudden impulse, he too determines to go and present himself to the cardinal. The history of this great prelate, a saintly man, is given in detail--his works of charity, his writings, his efforts in the cause of education. The Unnamed is welcomed by the Cardinal with joy and genuine tenderness, and the details of a religious conversion, often repulsive to an unsympathetic reader, here become, through the author’s skill, both natural and attractive.

Don Abbondio, to his great consternation is now sent with the celebrated outlaw to fetch Lucia from his castle. He goes thither, trembling, grumbling, and complaining to himself like an old woman. The poor girl is released, and believes, of course, that her deliverance is due to the Madonna.

Shortly afterwards the cardinal, on the occasion of a visit to Don Abbondio’s parish, takes the poor priest to task for his violated duty in refusing to celebrate the marriage. There are few passages in literature more impressive than the solemn severity of his reproof;--

“Signor Curate, why did you not unite in marriage this Lucia with
her bethrothed husband?”....

“Don Abbondio began to relate the doleful history; but
suppressing the principal name, he merely substituted _a great
Signor_; thus giving to prudence the little that he could in such
an emergency.

“‘And you have no other motive?’ asked the Cardinal, having
attentively heard the whole.

“‘Perhaps I have not sufficiently explained myself,’ replied Don
Abbondio. ‘I was prohibited under pain of death to perform this
marriage.’

“‘And does this appear to you a sufficient reason for omitting
a positive duty?’

“‘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.

“He went on from one thing to another, till he seemed to find
himself in a large church, in the first ranks, in the midst of
a great crowd of people; there he was, wondering how he had got
there, how the thought had ever entered his head, particularly
at such a time; and he felt in his heart excessively vexed.
He looked at the bystanders; they had all pale, emaciated
countenances, with staring and glistening eyes, and hanging lips;
their garments were tattered and falling to pieces; and through
the rents appeared livid spots, and swellings. ‘Make room, you
rabble!’ he fancied he cried, looking towards the door, which
was far, far away; and accompanying the cry with a threatening
expression of countenance, but without moving a limb; nay,
even drawing up his body to avoid coming in contact with those
polluted creatures, who crowded only too closely upon him on
every side. But not one of the senseless beings seemed to move,
nor even to have heard him; nay, they pressed still more upon
him; and, above all, it felt as if some one of them, with his
elbow, or whatever it might be, was pushing against his left
side, between the heart and arm-pit, where he felt a painful, and
as it were, heavy pressure. And if he writhed himself to get rid
of this uneasy feeling, immediately a fresh unknown something
began to prick him in the very same place. Enraged, he attempted
to lay his hand on his sword; and then it seemed as if the
thronging of the multitude had raised it up level with his chest,
and that it was the hilt of it which pressed so in that spot;
and the moment he touched it he felt a still sharper stitch. He
cried out, panted, and would have uttered a still louder cry,
when, behold! all these faces turned in one direction. He looked
the same way, perceived a pulpit, and saw slowly rising above
its edge something round, smooth, and shining; then rose, and
distinctly appeared, a bald head; then two eyes, a face, a long
and white beard, and the upright figure of a friar, visible above
the sides down to the girdle; it was Friar Cristoforo! Darting a
look around upon his audience, he seemed to Don Rodrigo to fix
his gaze on him, at the same time raising his hand in exactly
the attitude he had assumed in that room on the ground floor
in his palace. Don Rodrigo then himself lifted up his hands in
fury, and made an effort, as if to throw himself forward and
grasp that arm extended in the air; a voice, which had been
vainly and secretly struggling in his throat, burst forth in a
great howl; and he awoke. He dropped the arm he had in reality
uplifted, strove, with some difficulty, to recover the right
meaning of everything, and to open his eyes, for the light of
the already advanced day gave him no less uneasiness than that
of the candle had done; recognized his bed and his chamber;
understood that all had been a dream; the church, the people, the
friar, all had vanished--all, but one thing--that pain in his
left side. Together with this, he felt a frightful acceleration
of palpitation at the heart, a noise and humming in his ears, a
raging fire within, and a weight in all his limbs, worse than
when he lay down. He hesitated a little before looking at the
spot that pained him; at length, he uncovered it, and glanced at
it with a shudder;--there was a hideous spot, of a livid purple
hue.”

The unhappy man now finds that he has been betrayed by Griso, the chief of his bravoes, who, under pretense of bringing the doctor, has introduced into the room the horrible _monatti_, whose duty it is to drag away the dead to their graves and the sick to the Lazaretto. They plunder the stricken man of his treasures before his eyes, and then carry him away.

In the meantime Renzo, who has had the plague in the Bergamascan territory, finds it safe to return home, amid the general confusion, and proceeds to Milan to find Lucia. The terrible scenes in the streets are graphically described, but the realism is combined with a certain delicacy on the part of the author which renders even its most dreadful details not wholly repulsive. For instance, Renzo sees coming down the steps of one of the doorways.

“A woman with the delicate, yet majestic beauty, which is
conspicuous in the Lombard blood. Her gait was weary, but not
tottering; no tears fell from her eyes, though they bore tokens
of having shed many; there was something peaceful and profound in
her sorrow, which indicated a mind fully conscious and sensitive
enough to feel it.... She carried in her arms a little child,
about nine years old, now a lifeless body; but laid out and
arranged, with her hair parted on her forehead, and in a white
and remarkably clean dress, as if those hands had decked her
out for a long promised feast, granted as a reward. Nor was she
lying there, but upheld and adjusted on one arm, with her breast
reclining against her mother’s, like a living creature; save that
a delicate little hand, as white as wax, hung from one side with
a kind of inanimate weight, and the head rested upon her mother’s
shoulder with an abandonment deeper than that of sleep: her
mother; for, even if their likeness to each other had not given
assurance of the fact, the countenance which still depicted any
feeling would have clearly revealed it.”

“A horrible looking _monatto_ approached the woman, and
attempted to take the burden from her arms, with a kind of
unusual respect, however, and with involuntary hesitation. But
she, slightly drawing back, yet with the air of one who shows
neither scorn nor displeasure, said, ‘No, don’t take her from
me yet; I must place her myself on this cart; here.’ So saying,
she opened her hand, displayed a purse which she held in it, and
dropped it into that which the _monatto_ extended towards her.
She then continued: ‘Promise me not to take a thread from around
her, nor let any one else attempt to do so, and to lay her in the
ground thus.’

“The _monatto_ laid his right hand on his heart; and then
zealously, and almost obsequiously, rather from the new feeling
by which he was, as it were, subdued, than on account of the
unlooked-for reward, hastened to make a little room on the car
for the infant dead. The lady, giving it a kiss on the forehead,
laid it on the spot prepared for it, as upon a bed, arranged it
there, covering it with a pure white linen cloth, and pronounced
the parting words: ‘Farewell, Cecilia! rest in peace! This
evening we, too, will join you, to rest together forever. In the
meanwhile, pray for us; for I will pray for you and the others.’
Then, turning again to the _monatto_, ‘You,’ said she, ‘when you
pass this way in the evening, may come to fetch me too, and not
me only.’

“So saying, she re-entered the house, and, after an instant,
appeared at the window, holding in her arms another more
dearly-loved one, still living, but with the marks of death on
its countenance. She remained to contemplate these so unworthy
obsequies of the first child, from the time the car started until
it was out of sight, and then disappeared. And what remained
for her to do, but to lay upon the bed the only one that was
left her, and to stretch herself beside it, that they might die
together, as the flower already full blown upon the stem falls
together with the bud still enfolded in its calyx, under the
scythe which levels alike all the herbage of the field.”

Renzo learns that Lucia has been taken to the Lazaretto, and he proceeds thither. The scenes in that dreadful abode of suffering are described in detail. Here he meets Father Cristoforo, who in tending the sick is already falling a victim.

“His voice was feeble, hollow, and as changed as everything else
about him. His eye alone was what it always was, or had something
about it even more bright and resplendent; as if Charity,
elevated by the approaching end of her labors, and exulting in
the consciousness of being near her source, restored to it a more
ardent and purer fire than that which infirmity was every hour
extinguishing.”

Renzo learns that Don Rodrigo himself is lying unconscious in one of the miserable hovels, and, filled at first with rage at the recollection of the man who has caused him so much wretchedness, he is at last brought, by the commanding reproofs of Father Cristoforo, into such a forgiving spirit that he can pray for his enemy’s salvation.

Renzo seeks Lucia in vain amid the procession of the few persons who were going forth cured from the Lazaretto, but he finds her at last, convalescent in one of the little huts in the woman’s quarters. A very characteristic conversation ensued between the lovers in regard to the binding nature of her vow, which Renzo naturally disputes, and calls Father Cristoforo to remonstrate and interpose. The good father consolingly tells Lucia that she had no right to offer to the Lord the will of another to whom she was already pledged; and by virtue of the authority of the church he absolves her from her vow. It is not long until the lovers, restored to their former happiness, leave the Lazaretto; and the book concludes with the consummation of their wishes--their marriage, and a happy wedded life.

A great deal of quiet satire pervades the story. Take, for instance, the following, in the description of Lecco, at the very opening of the book: