THE INTERRUPTED WEDDING.
[Don Abbondio, by finding one excuse after another for deferring the marriage, has driven Renzo nearly to despair. At last, having discovered the reason for the priest’s hesitation, in Don Rodrigo’s hostility, he eagerly adopts a suggestion of Lucia’s mother, Agnese, to the effect that a perfectly legal, though irregular, marriage may be performed by the parties severally pronouncing, before a priest, and in the presence of witnesses, the words, “This is my wife,” and “This is my husband.” Renzo easily secures two witnesses, in the persons of his friend Tonio and the latter’s half-witted brother. Tonio owes Don Abbondio twenty-fivelire, for which the priest holds his wife’s necklace in pledge, and Renzo secures his co-operation by giving him the amount of the debt. The five start at dusk for Don Abbondio’s house. Agnese engages the priest’s housekeeper in conversation outside the front door, and the others slip upstairs unnoticed—the bride and bridegroom waiting on the landing, while Tonio knocks at the door of Don Abbondio’s sitting-room.]
“Deo gratias!” said Tonio, in a loud voice.
“Tonio, eh? Come in,” replied a voice from within.
Tonio opened the door just wide enough to admit himself and his brother, one at a time, and then closed it after him, while Renzo and Lucia remained silent and motionless in the dark.
Don Abbondio was sitting in an old arm-chair, wrapped in a dilapidated dressing-gown, with an ancient cap on his head, which made a frame all round his face. By the faint light of a small lamp the two thick white tufts of hair which projected from under the cap, his bushy white eyebrows, moustache, and pointed beard all seemed, on his brown and wrinkled face, like bushes covered with snow on a rocky hillside seen by moonlight.
“Ah! ah!” was his salutation, as he took off his spectacles and put them into the book he was reading.
“Your Reverence will say we are late in coming,” said Tonio, bowing, as did Gervaso, but more awkwardly.
“Certainly it is late—late in every way. Do you know that I am ill?”
“Oh! I am very sorry, sir!”
“You surely must have heard that I am ill, and don’t know when I can see any one.... But why have you brought that—that fellow with you?”
“Oh! just for company, like, sir!”
“Very good—now let us see.”
“There are twenty-five newberlinghe, sir—those with Saint Ambrose on horseback on them,” said Tonio, drawing a folded paper from his pocket.
“Let us see,” returned Abbondio, and takingthe paper, he put on his spectacles, unfolded it, took out the silver pieces, turned them over and over, counted them, and found them correct.
“Now, your Reverence, will you kindly give me my Tecla’s necklace?”
“Quite right,” replied Don Abbondio; and going to a cupboard, he unlocked it, and having first looked round, as if to keep away any spectators, opened one side, stood in front of the open door, so that no one could see in, put in his head to look for the pledge, and his arm to take it out, and, having extracted it, locked the cupboard, unwrapped the paper, said interrogatively, “All right?” wrapped it up again, and handed it over to Tonio.
“Now,” said the latter, “would you please let me have a little black and white, sir?”
“This, too!” exclaimed Don Abbondio; “they are up to every trick! Eh! how suspicious the world has grown! Can’t you trust me?”
“How, your Reverence, not trust you? You do me wrong! But as my name is down on your book, on the debtor side, ... and you have already had the trouble of writing it once, so ... in case anything were to happen, you know...”
“All right, all right,” interrupted Don Abbondio, and, grumbling to himself, he opened the table drawer, took out pen, paper, and inkstand, and began to write, repeating the words out loud as he set them down. Meanwhile, Tonio, and, at a sign from him, Gervaso, placed themselves in front of the table, so as to prevent the writer from seeing the door, and, as if in mere idleness, began to move their feet about noisily on the floor, in order to serve as a signal to those outside, and, at the same time, to deaden the sound of their footsteps. Don Abbondio, intent on his work, noticed nothing. Renzo and Lucia hearing the signal, entered on tiptoe, holding their breath, and stood close behind the two brothers. Meanwhile, Don Abbondio, who had finished writing, read over the document attentively, without raising his eyes from the paper, folded it, and saying, “Will you be satisfied now?” took off his spectacles with one hand, and held out the sheet to Tonio with the other. Tonio, while stretching out his hand to take it, stepped back on one side, and Gervaso, at a sign from him, on the other, and between the two appeared Renzo and Lucia. Don Abbondio saw them, started, was dumfoundered, became furious, thought it over, and came to a resolution, all in the time that Renzo took in uttering these words: “Your Reverence, in the presence of these witnesses, this is my wife!” His lips had not yet ceased moving when Don Abbondio let fall the receipt, which he was holding in his left hand, raised the lamp, and seizing the table-cloth with his right hand, draggedit violently towards him, throwing book, papers, and inkstand to the ground, and, springing between the chair and table, approached Lucia. The poor girl, with her sweet voice all trembling, had only just been able to say “This is ...” when Don Abbondio rudely flung the table-cloth over her head, and immediately dropping the lamp which he held in his other hand, used the latter to wrap it tightly round her face, nearly suffocating her, while he roared at the top of his voice, like a wounded bull, “Perpetua! Perpetua! treason! help!” When the light was out the priest let go his hold of the girl, went groping about for the door leading into an inner room, and, having found it, entered and locked himself in, still shouting, “Perpetua! treason! help! get out of this house! get out of this house!” In the other room all was confusion; Renzo, trying to catch the priest, and waving his hands about as though he had been playing at blindman’s buff, had reached the door, and kept knocking, crying out, “Open! open! don’t make a noise!” Lucia called Renzo in a feeble voice, and said supplicatingly, “Let us go! do let us go!” Tonio was down on his hands and knees, feeling about the floor to find his receipt, while Gervaso jumped about and yelled like one possessed, trying to get out by the door leading to the stairs.
In the midst of this confusion we cannot refrain from a momentary reflection. Renzo, raising a noise by night in another man’s house, which he had surreptitiously entered, and keeping its owner besieged in an inner room, has every appearance of being an oppressor,—yet, after all, when you come to look at it, he was the oppressed. Don Abbondio, surprised, put to flight, frightened out of his wits while quietly attending to his own business, would seem to be the victim; and yet in reality, it was he who did the wrong. So goes the world, as it often happens; at least, so it used to go in the seventeenth century.
A. Manzoni.
A. Manzoni.
A. Manzoni.
A. Manzoni.