Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/348

 from the most persevering, he framed the stories we have already related, at the same time offering them as mere reports that he had heard; without, however, placing much reliance on them.

But when enquiry came to be made by order of the cardinal, or rather, by order of some great person, as his name was not mentioned, Bortolo became more uneasy, and judged it prudent to maintain his ordinary method of reply, with this addition, that he gave to the stories he had fabricated an air of greater verity and plausibility.

We must not conclude, however, that Don Gonzalo had any personal dislike to our poor mountaineer; we must not conclude that, informed perhaps of his disrespect and ill-timed jests upon his Moorish king enchained by the throat, he wished to wreak his vengeance on him, nor that he considered him a person dangerous enough to be pursued even in his flight, as was Hannibal by the Roman senate. Don Gonzalo had too many things to think of, to trouble himself with the actions of Renzo, and if he appeared to do so, it was the result of a singular concurrence of circumstances; by which the poor fellow, without wishing it, or even knowing why, found himself attached, as by an invisible thread, to numerous and important affairs. 



have had occasion to mention more than once a war which was then fermenting, for the succession to the states of the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, the second of the name; we have said that, at the death of this duke, his nearest heir, Carlos Gonzaga, chief of a younger branch transplanted to France, where he possessed the duchies of Nevers and Rhetel, had entered into possession of Mantua and Montferrat; the Spanish minister, who 