Page:Manzoni - The Betrothed, 1834.djvu/445

 spectator. But Renzo was occupied with his own peculiar anxieties; the slow progress of the procession enabled him to scan with ease every face as it passed. He looked and looked again, and always in vain! His eye wandered from rank to rank, from face to face—they came, they passed—in vain, in vain—none but unknown features! A new ray of hope dawned upon his mind as he beheld some cars approaching, in which were the convalescents who were still too feeble to support the fatigue of walking. They approached so slowly that Renzo had full leisure to examine each in turn. But he was again disappointed; the cars had all passed, and Father Michael, with his staff in his hand, brought up the rear as regulator of the procession.

Thus nearly vanished his hopes, and with them his resolution. His only ground of hope now was to find Lucy still under the power of the disease; to this sad and feeble hope, he clung with all the ardour of his nature. He fell on his knees at the last step of the temple, and breathed forth an unconnected, but fervent prayer; he arose, strengthened in hope; and passing the railing pointed out by the father, entered into the quarter allotted to the women. As he entered it, he saw on the ground one of the little bells that the monatti carried on their feet, with its leather straps attached to it. Thinking it might serve him as a passport, he tied it to his foot, and then began his painful search. Here new scenes of sorrow met his eye, similar in part to those he had already witnessed, partly dissimilar. Under the weight of the same calamity, he discerned a more patient endurance of pain, and a greater sensibility to the afflictions of others; they to whom bodily suffering is a lot and an inheritance, acquire from it fortitude to bear their own woes, and sympathy to bestow on the woes of others.

Renzo had proceeded some distance on his search, when he heard behind him a "Ho!" which appeared to be addressed to him. Turning, he saw at a distance a commissary, who cried, "Go there into those rooms; they want you there; they have not finished carrying all off."

Renzo perceived that he took him for a monatto, and