‘ESCAPE, escape, my good fellow! here is a convent; there is a church; this way, that way,’ was heard by Renzo on every side. As to escaping, the reader may judge whether he would have need of advice on this head. From the first moment that the hope of extricating himself from the talons of the police had crossed his mind, he had begun to form his plans, and resolved, if he succeeded in this one, to flee without delay, not only out of the city, but also out of the duchy of Milan. — For — thought he — they have my name on their black books, however on earth they’ve got it; and with my name and surname, they can seize me whenever they like. — As to an asylum, he would not willingly have recourse to one, unless, indeed, he were reduced to extremity; — For, if I can be a bird of the woods — thought he again — I won’t be a bird of the cage. — He had therefore designed as his limit and place of refuge, a village in the territory of Bergamo, where his cousin Bortolo resided, who, the reader may remember, had frequently solicited Renzo to remove thither. But now the point was how to find his way there. Left in an unknown part of a city almost equally unknown, Renzo could not even tell by which gate he should pass to go to Bergamo; and when he had learnt this, he still did not know the way to the gate. He stood for a moment in doubt whether to ask direction of his liberators; but as, in the short time he had had for reflection on his circumstances, many strong suspicions had crossed his mind of that obliging sword-cutler, the father of four children, he was not much inclined to reveal his intentions to a large crowd, where there might be others of the same stamp; he quickly decided, therefore, to get away from that neighbourhood as fast as he could; and he might afterwards ask his way in a part where nobody would know who he was, or why he asked it. Merely saying, then, to his deliverers, ‘Thank you, thank you, my friends: blessings on you!’ and escaping through the space that was immediately cleared for him, he took to his heels, and off he went, up one little street, and down another, running for some time without knowing whither. When he thought he was far enough off, he slackened his pace, not to excite suspicion, and began looking around to choose some person of whom he could make inquiries — some face that would inspire confidence. But here, also, there was need of caution. The inquiry in itself was suspicious; time pressed; the bailiffs, immediately on making their escape from this rencontre, would, undoubtedly, renew their search of the fugitive; the rumour of his flight might even have reached hither: and in such a concourse, Renzo might carefully scrutinize a dozen physiognomies, before he could meet with a countenance that seemed likely to suit his purpose. That fat fellow, standing at the door of his shop, with legs extended, and his hands behind his back, the prominent corpulency of this person projecting beyond the doorway, and supporting his great double chin; who, from mere idleness, was employing himself in alternately raising his tremendous bulk upon his toes, and letting it sink again upon his heels — he looked too much like an inquisitive gossip, who would have returned interrogatories instead of replies. That other, advancing with fixed eyes and a drooping lip, instead of being able expeditiously and satisfactorily to direct another in his way, scarcely seemed to know his own. That tall, stout boy, who, to say the truth, certainly looked intelligent enough, appeared also rather maliciously inclined, and probably would have taken a mischievous delight in sending a poor stranger exactly the opposite way to the one he was inquiring after. So true is it that, to a man in perplexity, almost everything seems to be a new perplexity! At last, fixing his eyes on one who was approaching in evident haste, he thought that he, having probably some pressing business in hand, would give an immediate and direct answer, to get rid of him; and hearing him talking to himself, he deemed that he must be an undesigning person. He, therefore, accosted him with the question, ‘Will you be good enough to tell me, sir, which direction I should take to go to Bergamo?’
‘To go to Bergamo? The Porta Orientale.’
‘Thank you, sir: and to the Porta Orientale?’
‘Take this street to the left; you will come out into the square of the cathedral; then . . . ‘
‘That will do, sir; I know the rest. Heaven reward you.’ And on he went by the way that had been pointed out to him. His director looked after him for a moment, and comparing in his mind his way of walking, with the inquiry, thought within himself — Either he is after somebody, or somebody is after him. —
Renzo reached the square of the cathedral, crossed it, passed by a heap of cinders and extinguished combustibles, and recognized the relics of the bonfire at which he had assisted the day before; he then passed along the flight of steps leading up to the cathedral, and saw again the bakehouse of the Crutches half demolished, and guarded by soldiers; still he proceeded onward, and, by the street which he had already traversed with the crowd, arrived in front of the convent of the Capuchins, where, glancing at the square and the church-door, he said to himself with a deep sigh:— That friar yesterday gave me good advice, when he bid me go wait in the church, and employ myself profitably there. —
Here he stopped a moment to reconnoitre the gate through which he had to pass; and seeing, even at that distance, many soldiers on guard, his imagination also being rather overstrained, (one must pity him; for he had had enough to unsettle it), he felt a kind of repugnance at encountering the passage. Here he was, with a place of refuge close at hand, where, with the letter of recommendation, he would have been well received; and he felt strongly tempted to enter it. But he quickly summoned up his courage, and thought:— A bird of the woods, as long as I can. Who knows me? Certainly the bailiffs cannot have divided themselves into enough pieces to come and watch for me at every gate. — He looked behind him to see if they were coming in that direction, and saw neither them, nor any one who seemed to be taking notice of him. He, therefore, set off again, slackened the pace of those unfortunate legs which, with their own good will, would have kept constantly on the run, when it was much better only to walk; and, proceeding leisurely along, whistling in an under-tone, he arrived at the gate. Just at the entrance there was a party of police-officers, together with a reinforcement of Spanish soldiers; but these all had their attention di-rected to the outside, to forbid entrance to such as, hearing the news of an insurrection, would flock thither like vultures to a deserted field of battle; so that Renzo, quietly walking on, with his eyes bent to the ground, and with a gait between that of a traveller and a common passenger, passed the threshold without any one speaking a word to him: but his heart beat violently. Seeing a little street to the right, he took that way to avoid the high road, and continued his course for some time before he ventured to look round.
On he went; he came to cottages and villages, which he passed without asking their names: he felt certain of getting away from Milan, and hoped he was going towards Bergamo, and this was enough for him at present. From time to time he kept glancing behind him, while walking onwards, occasionally looking at and rubbing one or other of his wrists, which were still a little benumbed, and marked with a red line from the pressure of the manacles. His thoughts were, as every one may imagine, a confused medley of repentance, disputes, disquietude, revenge, and other more tender feelings; it was a wearying endeavour to recall what he had said and done the night before, to unravel the mysterious part of his mournful adventures, and, above all, how they had managed to discover his name. His suspicions naturally fell on the sword-cutler, to whom he remembered having spoken very frankly. And retracing the way in which he had drawn him into conversation, together with his whole behaviour, and those proffers which always ended in wishing to know something about him, his suspicions were changed almost to certainty. He had, besides, some faint recollection of continuing to chatter after the departure of the cutler; but with whom? guess it, ye crickets; of what? his memory, spite of his efforts, could not tell him this: it could only remind him that he had not been at all himself that evening. The poor fellow was lost in these speculations: he was like a man who has affixed his signature to a number of blank formulae, and committed them to the care of one he esteemed honest and honourable, and having discovered him to be a shuffling meddler, wishes to ascertain the state of his affairs. What can he discover? It is a chaos. Another painful speculation was how to form some design for the future that would not be a merely aerial project, or at least a melancholy one.
By and by, however, he became still more anxious about finding his way; and after walking for some distance at a venture, he saw the necessity of making some inquiries. Yet he felt particularly reluctant to utter the word ‘Bergamo,’ as if there were something suspicious or dangerous in the name, and could not bring himself to pronounce it. He resolved, however, to ask direction, as he had before done at Milan, of the first passenger whose countenance suited his fancy, and he shortly met with one.
‘You are out of the road,’ replied his guide; and having thought a moment, he pointed out to him, partly by words and partly by gestures, the way he should take to regain the high road. Renzo thanked him for his directions, and pretended to follow them, by actually taking the way he had indicated, with the intention of almost reaching the public road, and then, without losing sight of it, to keep parallel with its course as far as possible, but not to set foot within it. The design was easier to conceive than to effect, and the result was, that, by going thus from right to left in a zigzag course, partly following the directions he obtained by the way, partly correcting them by his own judgment, and adapting them to his intentions, and partly allowing himself to be guided by the lanes he traversed, our fugitive had walked perhaps twelve miles, when he was not more than six distant from Milan; and as to Bergamo, it was a great chance if he were not going away from it. He began at last to perceive that by this method he would never come to an end, and determined to find out some remedy. The plan that occurred to his mind was to get the name of some village bordering on the confines, which he could reach by the neighbouring roads: and by asking his way thither, he could collect information, without leaving behind him the name of Bergamo, which seemed to him to savour so strongly of flight, escape, and crime.
While ruminating on the best way of obtaining these instructions without exciting suspicion, he saw a bush hanging over the door of a solitary cottage just outside a little village. He had for some time felt the need of recruiting his strength, and thinking that this would be the place to serve two purposes at once, he entered. There was no one within but an old woman, with her distaff at her side, and the spindle in her hand. He asked for something to eat, and was offered a little stracchino1 and some good wine; he gladly accepted the food, but excused himself from taking any wine, feeling quite an abhorrence of it, after the errors it had made him guilty of the night before; and then sat down, begging the old woman to make haste. She served up his meal in a moment, and then began to tease her customer with inquiries, both about himself, and the grand doings at Milan, the report of which had already reached here. Renzo not only contrived to parry and elude her inquiries with much dexterity, but even profited by the difficulty, and made the curiosity of the old woman subservient to his intentions, when she asked him where he was going to.
‘I have to go to many places,’ replied he: ‘and if I can find a moment of time, I want to pass a little while at that village, rather a large one, on the road to Bergamo, near the border, but in the territory of Milan . . . What do they call it?’— there must be one there, surely — thought he, in the mean while.
‘Gorgonzola you mean,’ replied the old woman.
‘Gorgonzola!’ repeated Renzo, as if to imprint the word better on his memory. ‘Is it very far from here?’ resumed he.
‘I don’t know exactly; it may be ten or twelve miles. If one of my sons were here, he could tell you.’
‘And do you think I can go by these pleasant lanes without taking the high road? There is such a dust there! such a shocking dust! It’s so long since it rained!’
‘I fancy you can: you can ask at the first village you came to, after turning to the right.’ And she named it.
‘That’s well,’ said Renzo; and rising, he took in his hand a piece of bread remaining from his scanty meal, of a very different quality to that which he had found the day before at the foot of the cross of San Dionigi; and paying the reckoning, he set off again, following the road to the right hand. By taking care not to wander from it more than was needful, and with the name of Gorgonzola in his mouth, he proceeded from village to village, until, about an hour before sunset, he arrived there.
During his walk, he had resolved to make another stop here, and to take some rather more substantial refreshment. His body also craved a little rest; but rather than gratify this desire, Renzo would have sunk in a swoon upon the ground. He proposed gaining some information at the inn about the distance of the Adda, to ascertain dexterously if there was any cross-road that led to it, and to set off again, even at this hour, immediately after his repast. Born and brought up at the second source, so to say, of this river, he had often heard it said, that at a certain point, and for some considerable distance, it served as a boundary between the Milanese and Venetian states; he had no very distinct idea of where this boundary commenced, or how far it extended; but, for the present, his principal object was to get beyond it. If he did not succeed in reaching it that evening, he resolved to walk as long as the night and his strength would allow him, and afterwards to wait the approaching day in a field, or a wilderness, or wherever God pleased, provided it were not an inn.
After walking a few paces along the street at Gorgonzola, he noticed a sign, entered the inn, and on the landlord’s advancing to meet him, ordered something to eat, and a small measure of wine; the additional miles he had passed, and the time of day, having overcome his extreme and fanatical hatred of this beverage. ‘I must beg you to be quick,’ added he; ‘for I’m obliged to go on my way again very soon.’ This he said not only because it was the truth, but also for fear the host, imagining that he was going to pass the night there, should come and ask him his name and surname, and where he came from, and on what business . . . But enough!
The landlord replied that he should be waited upon immediately; and Renzo sat down at the end of the table, near the door, the usual place of the bashful.
Some loungers of the village had assembled in this room, who, after having argued over, and discussed, and commented upon, the grand news from Milan of the preceding day, were now longing to know a little how matters were going on; the more so, as their first information was rather fitted to irritate their curiosity than to satisfy it; a sedition, neither subdued nor triumphant; suspended, rather than terminated, by the approach of night; a defective thing; the con-clusion of an act, rather than of a drama. One of these detached himself from the party, and seating himself by the new comer, asked him if he came from Milan.
‘I?’ said Renzo, in a tone of surprise, to gain time for a reply.
‘You, if the question is allowable.’
Renzo, shaking his head, compressing his lips, and uttering an inarticulate sound, replied; ‘Milan, from what I hear . . . from what they say around . . . is not exactly a place to go at present, unless in case of great necessity.’
‘Does the uproar continue, then, to-day?’ demanded his inquisitive companion more eagerly.
‘I must have been there to know that,’ said Renzo.
‘But you — don’t you come from Milan?’
‘I come from Liscate,’ replied the youth, promptly, who, in the mean while, had decided upon his reply. Strictly speaking, he had come from there, because he had passed it; and he had learnt the name from a traveller on the road, who had mentioned that village as the first he must pass on his way to Gorgonzola.
‘Oh! said his friend, in that tone which seems to say: You’d have done better if you had come from Milan; but patience. ‘And at Liscate,’ added he, ‘did you hear nothing about Milan?’
‘There may very likely have been somebody who knew something about it,’ replied the mountaineer, ‘but I heard nothing.’ And this was proffered in that particular manner which seems to mean: I’ve finished. The querist returned to his party, and a moment afterwards, the landlord came to set out his meal.
‘How far is it from here to the Adda?’ asked Renzo, in an undertone, with the air of one who is half asleep, and an indifferent manner, such as we have already seen him assume on some other occasions.
‘To the Adda — to cross it?’ said the host.
‘That is . . . yes . . . to the Adda.’
‘Do you want to cross by the bridge of Cassano, or the Ferry of Canonica?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind where . . . I only ask from curiosity............