The Manzoni Family Read Free Page B

Giulia when she lived among these people. As for Don Pietro, he felt neither affection nor hostility for the boy. His presence in the house disturbed him, as it reminded him of Giulia and his unfortunate marriage. However, he felt it his duty to behave with decorum. The law had consigned this boy to him, and he placed law in the highest sphere of the human condition. But he could offer him only a severe and weary gaze and inhibited, speechless protection. Moreover, the boy himself was uncertain how to behave towards this melancholy man. He was ill at ease. He had a group of friends and imitated their behaviour. He talked with them about women, and in the evenings went to gamble at the Ridotto della Scala. It was at that time that he got to know the poet Vincenzo Monti, and saw in him an authoritative presence, a model to be emulated. He wrote verses which Vincenzo Monti read. One evening in the theatre, sitting in a box beside a certain Contessa Cicognara, he saw Napoleon Bonaparte; like a flash of lightning, the General’s gaze alighted for a moment on the Contessa who he knew loathed him, and then moved scornfully away; those penetrating, scornful eyes remained in the boy’s memory for ever.
    Vincenzo Monti was the guest of Giulia and Carlo Imbonati during a visit to Paris not long before Imbonati died, and he spoke of Alessandro. Then Imbonati wrote to Alessandro inviting him to visit them. He was curious to make his acquaintance and felt guilty since he and Giulia had never given a serious thought to the boy growing up far away. In fact, he had taken his mother away from him. Perhaps he also had a subconscious premonition of his death and wanted Giulia to have her son beside her. Alessandro was then nineteen. When he received Imbonati’s letter, he asked Don Pietro for the money for the journey. Don Pietro gave it to him and thought of his departure with a sense of liberation. In the spring the news of Imbonati’s death reached them. Alessandro left for Paris in June.
    In Paris, in rue Saint-Honoré, mother and son found themselves face to face like two people who had never met before. They were not mother and son but a woman and a man. She was suffering a recent bereavement and bore the traces of grief in her face. He felt suddenly called upon to sustain her. They were not mother and son because the maternal and filial bonds between them had been severed over the years in which they had been living far from each other, each wanting to forget the other. In his memory was buried the image of the mother who had abandoned him and vanished, and it bred anguish and a confused rancour. . . In her was buried the image of an infant to whom she had given no motherly affection and from whom she had fled, and it bred anguish and remorse. All these buried emotions suddenly flared up briefly between them before sinking back again into obscurity, but not without emitting flashes and clamour which dazzled and bemused them. A new life was beginning for both.
    Alessandro fell in love with Giulia, and not only with her but suddenly with everything around her, with the memory of Carlo Imbonati, with Paris, Sophie de Condorcet and Fauriel. Later a very real and profound friendship would develop between Manzoni and Fauriel, but at this early stage he was only someone dear to Giulia and illuminated by her radiance.
    He sent his verses to Fauriel who gave his opinion of them. Alessandro replied: ‘Knowing you were so well informed about Italian literature, I was afraid to show you my verses: and the same reason makes your reception of them all the more flattering. . . I close, assuring you of my real distress that I can not express my feelings to you in person. Shall I never clasp that hand which placed my dear, unhappy mother’s in the cold hand of her and my Carlo? But our hands can only be joined by my mother’s.’
    He wrote a long hymn, On the Death of Carlo Imbonati, dedicated to his mother. Later he came