The Manzoni Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

her at Meulan, where a priest friend of Fauriel would make no difficulties about the non-Catholic marriage of the parents. In her first month the baby girl became seriously ill. Manzoni wrote to Fauriel: ‘Poor Giulietta has had German measles and thrush at the same time — two deadly illnesses at the age of twenty days; it’s all over now, but what a harsh entrance into the best of all possible worlds. ‘ Meanwhile he was finishing a short poem called ‘Urania’, and thinking of another to be called ‘La vaccina’.
    Giulietta was not baptised until the summer, at Meulan as had been decided; and Enrichetta was sad because she felt they were separating her from her daughter, since she herself had grown up in another faith. The christening was organized by Madame de Condorcet whom she knew to be an unbeliever; and Fauriel was an unbeliever and he had been chosen to act as godfather to the baby girl; and he, an unbeliever, recited the Credo and Abrenuntio. For Enrichetta any religious event was a very serious matter.
    In Paris the Manzonis frequented a group of people Enrichetta liked, some Piedmontese patriots who had been friends of Imbonati. They led a strict life and seemed imbued with great moral severity. Enrichetta felt happy in their company, much more than at La Maisonnette. One evening there was a discussion of the Catholic faith. Count Somis de Chavrie was there, a Turinese, Councillor at the Court of Appeal. ‘I believe in it,’ he said simply. Enrichetta was struck by these forceful words. She went up to him and asked him to suggest an expert in the Catholic faith who might talk to her and offer her some illumination. Somis recommended Abbé Degola.
    Abbé Degola was a Jansenist priest from Genoa, then about fifty. In 1801 in Paris he had taken part in the Second Council, and there he had become a friend of Bishop Grégoire, whom he helped to compile the Annals of Religion. Between 1804 and 1805 he travelled with Grégoire, visiting England, Holland, Germany and Prussia; at Hamburg he heard that Liguria had been annexed to the Empire by Napoleon, and he sent a protest against this action. At Genoa, with his friend Father Assarotti he founded an institute for deaf-mutes. Degola, according to his friend Achille Mauri who wrote his biography, was ‘well-proportioned with a gentle, benevolent countenance, and clear, bright eyes’. Nevertheless, in his portraits his face does not convey great gentleness or benevolence. Achille Mauri also says of him: ‘All things combined to adorn him with rare gifts: philosophy, letters and religion inclined him to virtue. A heart ever open to indulgence, sincerely amiable manners, a pleasing discourse remote from any rusticity won the love and respect of people of every order. . . He set religion above all other thoughts, and it made him humble, mild and patient. . . When he became a priest, all his actions revealed his conviction that the priesthood is an honourable bondage, imposing on all who undertake it a constant and diligent concern for the needs, passions and sufferings of all.’ It was said that he was without ambition. But he was ambitious to convert souls to the Catholic faith. From his travels with Bishop Grégoire there remain five notebooks in which he wrote down his impressions: he made dry judgements on the people he met, collected together thoughts and utterances he heard, listed facts and details, keeping a keen eye on everything around him.
    Erfurt. There are regular and Benedictine canonesses. At the Fort there were four canonesses, one a Benedictine who seemed to me something of a coquette; she allowed the Commandant Dall’ Alba to stroke her hand. I spoke Latin to an old Augustinian. . . In Leipzig there is a great loosening of moral standards. Divorce is common. But still more so in Halle; you have only to pay for it. . . Among the Lutherans it is said that Luther was a horse and Melanchthon the