The Patriot Part 1

The Patriot.

by Antonio Fogazzaro.

INTRODUCTION

_The Patriot (Piccolo Mondo Antico)_ was published in Milan in 1896, and has reached its forty-fourth edition, which is in itself sufficient proof of its popularity; for Italians do not purchase books largely, and one volume will often make the tour of a town, coming out of the campaign in rags and a newspaper cover.

Although _The Patriot_ is not an historical novel in the true sense of the term, it certainly throws a wonderful side-light on those ten years of "deadly cold and awful silence," a silence broken only from time to time by the cries of the martyrs of Mantua, by the noise of inward strife in the Papal States, and by the weeping of mothers who saw their sons disappear behind the clanging doors of Austrian fortresses. These ten years stretched drearily from the disastrous field of Novara to the glorious days of Magenta, Solferino and San Martino (1849-59).

Antonio Fogazzaro, born in Vicenza in 1842, was a child when the battle of Novara was fought and lost; but when the French drove the Austrians from the b.l.o.o.d.y field of Magenta, he, a youth of seventeen, was ready to be fired with patriotic enthusiasm.

During those years, there was little the patriots could do save to feed the fire of hatred against the foreign oppressors, and prepare, as best they could, in secret and in constant danger of death, for the moment when Piedmont should once more give the signal of revolt.

In the night that succeeded the battle of Novara, King Carlo Alberto, who had risked all for the freedom of the rest of Italy--for it must be remembered that his own kingdom of Sardinia was independent of Austria--discouraged, mortified, and impoverished, abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel. It was no longer possible to continue hostilities, and Carlo Alberto hoped that his son, whose wife, Maria Adelaide, was the daughter of an Austrian grand-duke, might obtain more favourable conditions from Austria for his unhappy country. On the following day the young King and Field-Marshal Radetzky met, and a peace was signed, the conditions of which Victor Emmanuel found great difficulty in persuading his parliament to ratify. But in the end Piedmont paid Austria an indemnity of seventy-five million francs.

Victor Emmanuel had not, however, abandoned the idea of United Italy, and could say with Ma.s.simo D'Azeglio: We will begin over again, and do better! Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, one of the greatest statesmen of modern times, stood by the King from the first. They immediately turned their attention towards bettering the condition of their impoverished country, and soon succeeded in rendering the little capital, Turin, one of the brightest and most prosperous cities of the Continent. The patriots, the best men in Italy, flocked to Turin from all those states where Austria or her tools held sway. The Piedmontese government granted subsidies to some of these refugees, and found employment for others, receiving all with open arms.

Meanwhile, Mazzini and Garibaldi were working, sometimes at home, sometimes in exile, while in Mantua brave patriots, among them several saintly priests, were suffering torture and death at the hands of the Austrians. The records of their trials revealed such palpable and flagrant violation of all justice, all law, that when the Austrians were at last expelled from Mantua, they were careful to remove these to Vienna, where they are still preserved. The aged mother of one of the priests who suffered execution appealed to the young Empress Elisabeth, begging that her son's body might be restored to her, and receive burial in consecrated ground. But Elisabeth was deaf to the unhappy woman's prayers. During the long and desolate years of her own affliction, how often must the unfortunate Empress have thought of the tears of blood the mothers of Italy had shed! It was Field-Marshal Haynau of inglorious memory, he who for his cruelties in that city had been dubbed the "hyena of Brescia," who tortured these martyrs of Mantua and signed their death-warrants.

All these things were happening during those ten years of heavy silence when Fogazzaro was a child. We can fancy how eagerly he listened to the accounts of these horrors, and to the long and animated discussions his father (Franco Maironi of _The Patriot_) and his uncle (Uncle Piero) held with the brilliant company that a.s.sembled at Casa Fogazzaro. His father took an active part in the defence of Vicenza in 1848, while his mother, whom he has portrayed for us in the lovely character of Signora Luisa Rigey, busied herself with sc.r.a.ping lint and making c.o.c.kades for the soldiers. These events and scenes, which so deeply impressed the child, were ever present to the mind of the man, and the long cherished project of immortalising those personages and places which were both familiar and dear to him, was at last realised in the pages of _The Patriot_, in which, evoking personal memories of the past, he gives us a stirring account of the petty persecutions and base meanness to which the mighty Austria stooped during that period of suspense and anxiety.

The intrigues of the rogue Pasotti, the skirmishes of the wicked old Marchesa with the adjutant of the great Radetzky himself, fill us with indignation and contempt, while we thrill with patriotic emotion when Luisa raises her gla.s.s and whispers: "Hurrah for Cavour!"--_whispers_ the words, because in those days the very walls had ears, and in her toast there breathed sedition!

As the years pa.s.sed and peace and prosperity settled over United Italy, another question, that of the religious life, began to occupy the master-mind of Antonio Fogazzaro. Intensely but broadly religious himself, he could not fail to introduce into his work the burning question of belief or unbelief which, from long contemplation and study, had become, as it were, a part of himself. The artistic motive of the book, the struggle between an unbelieving wife and an intensely religious husband, came to the Italian reader as a new revelation. Had Fogazzaro been influenced by certain works which had already excited much comment and discussion in England and America? Perhaps so; but at all events he has treated the subject differently, and in his own masterly fashion; he has spared us the long and tedious tirades of personages who are, after all, simply mouthpieces, and has given us instead two warm and palpitating human beings, who live and act in accordance with their opinions, and whose innermost souls are laid bare to us by their own deeds, their own actions. Franco and Luisa do not discuss and argue, they simply _feel_, feel intensely, and by a few burning words here, a few delicate touches there, our author leads us to feel with them, to understand and sympathise with their impulses, their pa.s.sions, and their weaknesses.

We may not agree with Fogazzaro's conclusions, but we cannot but admire the masterly delineation of character, the unstudied and thoroughly artistic arrangement of the work, and the skilful handling of so many different elements.

The very simplicity and directness of his language give to his style a grandeur all its own, and lend a peculiar charm to his descriptions of nature, which form some of the most fascinating pages of _The Patriot_.

With a few broad strokes, he spreads before us a landscape of ineffable beauty, or shows us the fury of the maddened elements. How marvellous in its solemn grandeur is the picture of the struggle between the sun and the fog, which Uncle Piero witnesses from the terrace at Oria! How wonderful in its awe-inspiring realism is the story of Franco's journey across the mountains, in the darkness of a moonless night! And that glorious picture of the sunrise, when Franco's crushed and tortured soul soars upwards again with the growing light, and, inspired and comforted, he once more squares his shoulders, and takes up his heavy burden of care!

Infinite sweetness breathes from the pages which deal with the short and sunny life of dear little Maria, and there are pa.s.sages full of humour and whimsical reflections that must remind the English reader of d.i.c.kens.

Perhaps when Fogazzaro wrote _The Patriot_, he had already planned the trilogy of which it forms the first volume, but certainly the trilogy was rather evolved than planned, evolved from the union of two such characters as Franco and Luisa; and probably, while writing the first, the author was, to a certain extent, ignorant of what the second and third volumes would contain; for Luisa and Franco, Jeanne and Piero are not puppets which have been fitted into a story, but the story is in every particular the outcome of their personalities.

Certain it is that when we read the promise contained in the closing lines of _The Patriot_, we look forward eagerly to the succeeding volumes of the trilogy; and when, after that marvellous scene in the gardener's house, we reluctantly bid farewell to the Saint, our first thought is a hope that the master may soon resume his magic pen and continue the struggle for the purification and regeneration of the Faith, and, through the Faith, of Mankind.

MARY PRICHARD-AGNETTI.

BERCETO, ITALY, _October, 1906_.

Part First

CHAPTER I

RISOTTO AND TRUFFLES

On the lake a cold _breva_[A] was blowing, striving to drive away the grey clouds which clung heavily about the dark mountain-tops. Indeed, when the Pasottis reached Casarico on their way down from Albogasio Superiore, it had not yet begun to rain. The waves beat and thundered on the sh.o.r.e, jostling the boats at their moorings, while flashing tongues of white foam showed, here and there, as far as the frowning banks of the Doi over yonder. But down in the west, at the end of the lake, a line of light could be seen, a sign of approaching calm, of the diminishing _breva_, and behind the gloomy Caprino hill appeared the first misty rain. Pasotti, in his full dress black overcoat, a tall hat on his head, his hand grasping a thick bamboo walking-stick, was pacing nervously along the sh.o.r.e, peering now in this direction, now in that, or stopping to beat his stick upon the ground, and to shout for that a.s.s of a boatman, who had not yet appeared.

The little black boat, with its red cushions, its red and white awning, its movable seat, used only on special occasions, fixed crosswise in its place, the oars lying ready amidship, was struggling, buffeted by the waves, between two coal barges, which hardly moved.

"Pin!" shouted Pasotti, growing more and more angry. "Pin!"

The only answer was the regular, constant thundering of the waves on the sh.o.r.e, and the b.u.mping of one boat against another. At that moment one would have said there was not so much as a live dog in the whole of Casarico. Only a plaintive, old voice, like the husky falsetto of a ventriloquist, groaned from beneath the portico--

"Hadn't we better walk?"

At last Pin appeared in the direction of San Mamette.

"Hurry up, there!" shrieked Pasotti, raising his arms. The man began to run.

"Beast!" Pasotti roared. "It was with good reason they gave you the name of a dog!"

"Hadn't we better walk, Pasotti?" groaned the plaintive voice. "Let us walk!"

Pasotti continued to abuse the boatman, who was hastily unfastening the chain of his boat from a ring, fixed in the bank. Presently he turned towards the portico, with an authoritative air, and jerking his chin, motioned to some one to come forward.

"Let us walk, Pasotti!" the voice groaned once more.

He shrugged his shoulders, made a rough gesture of command with his hand, and started down towards the boat.

Then an old lady appeared under one of the arches of the portico, her lean person enveloped in an Indian shawl, below which a black silk skirt showed. Her head was surmounted by a fashionable bonnet, spindling, and lofty, trimmed with tiny yellow roses, and black lace. Two black curls framed the wrinkled face; the eyes were large and gentle, and the wide mouth was shaded by a faint moustache.

"Oh Pin!" she exclaimed, clasping her canary-coloured gloves, and pausing on the bank to gaze helplessly at the boatman. "Can we really venture out with the lake in this state?"

Her husband made a still more imperious gesture, and his face a.s.sumed a still sourer expression. The poor woman slipped down to the boat in silence, and was helped in, trembling violently.

"I commend myself to Our Lady of Caravino, my good Pin!" she said. "What a dreadful lake!"

The boatman shook his head, smiling.

"By the way!" Pasotti exclaimed, "have you brought the sail along?"

"It is up at the house," Pin answered. "Shall I go for it? But perhaps the Signora here, might be frightened. Besides, here comes the rain!"

"Go and fetch it," said Pasotti.

The Signora, who was as deaf as a post, had not heard a word of this conversation, and, greatly amazed at seeing Pin run off, asked her husband where he was going.

"The sail!" Pasotti shouted into her face. She sat, bending forward, her mouth wide open, striving in vain, to catch, at least, the sound of his voice.

"The sail!" he repeated, still louder, his hands framing his mouth.

She began to think that she understood. Trembling with fright she drew a questioning hieroglyphic in the air with her finger. Pasotti answered by drawing an imaginary curve in the air, and blowing into it; then he silently nodded his head. His wife, convulsed with terror, started to leave the boat.