Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/440

 "Oh, I pardon him! I pardon him! I pardon him for ever!" said the young man.

"Renzo," said the friar, in a calmer tone, "think of it, and tell me how often you have pardoned him?"

He kept silence some time, and not receiving an answer, he bowed his head, and, with a voice trembling from emotion, continued, "You know why I wear this habit?"

Renzo hesitated.

"You know it?" repeated the old man.

"I know it."

"I likewise hated, I, who have reprimanded you for a thought, a word. The man I hated, I killed."

"Yes, but it was a noble, one of those"

"Silence!" interrupted the friar. "If that were justification, believe you I should not have found it in thirty years? Ah! if I could now make you experience the sentiment I have since had, and that I now have for the man I hated! If I could, I!—but God can. May he do it! Hear me, Renzo. He is a better friend to you, than you are to yourself; you have thought of revenge, but He has power enough, pity enough, to prevent it; you know you have often said that he can arrest the arm of the powerful; but learn, also, that he can arrest that of the vindictive. And because you are poor, because you are injured, can he not defend against you a man created in his image? Will he suffer you to do all you wish? No! but he can cast you off for ever; he can, for this sentiment which animates you, embitter your whole life, since, whatever happens to you, hold for certain, that all will be punishment until you have pardoned, pardoned freely and for ever!"

"Yes, yes," said Renzo, with much emotion, "I feel that I have never truly pardoned him; I have spoken as a brute and not as a Christian; and now, by the help of God, I pardon him from the bottom of my soul."

"And should you see him?"

"I would pray God to grant me patience, and to touch his heart."

"Do you remember that the Lord has not only told us to pardon our enemies, but to love them? Do you remember that he loved them so as to die for them?"