Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/444

 ; if unjust impatience, or culpable disgust, have caused us sometimes to appear severe and wearied in your presence; if, indeed, the miserable thought that you had need of us, has led us to be deficient in humility towards you; if our frailty has made us commit any action which may have given you pain, pardon us! May God remit also your offences, and bless you!"

We have here related, if not the very words, at least the sense of that which he uttered; but we cannot describe the accent which accompanied them. It was that of a man who called it a privilege to serve the afflicted, because he really considered it such; who confessed not to have worthily exercised this privilege, because he truly felt his deficiency; who asked pardon, because he was persuaded he had need of it. But his hearers, who had beheld these capuchins only occupied in serving them, who had beheld so many of them die in the service, and he who now spoke in the name of all, always the first in toil as he was the first in authority, his hearers could only answer him with tears. The good friar then took a cross which rested against a pillar, and holding it up before him, took off his sandals, passing through the crowd, which opened respectfully to give him a passage, and placed himself at their head.

Renzo, overcome with emotion, drew on one side, and placed himself near a cabin, where, half concealed, he awaited, with his eyes open, his heart palpitating, but with renewed confidence, the result of the emotion excited by the touching scene of which he had been a witness.

Father Felix proceeded barefooted at the head of the procession, with the cord about his neck, bearing that long and heavy cross; he advanced slowly but resolutely, as one who would spare the weakness of others, but whose ideas of duty enabled him to rise above his own. The largest children followed immediately behind him, for the most part barefooted, and very few entirely clothed; then came the women, nearly all of them leading a child, and singing alternately the miserere. The feeble sound of the voices, the paleness and languor of the countenances, would have excited commiseration in the heart of a mere