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The Betrothed Lovers; A Milanese Story of the Seventeenth Century
The Betrothed Lovers A Milanese Story of the Seventeenth Century Author:Alessandro Manzoni General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1845 Original Publisher: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of... more » this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER XVI. " Escape, escape, honest man; here is a convent, there is a church! on this side, on that side!" was shouted to Renzo on all hands. This advice was not necessary, as far as escape was concerned. From the first moment that the hope of freeing himself from these wretches' clutches had arisen in his mind, he had begun to form his plans, and determined, if successful, to fly, when once at liberty, not only the city, but the duchy. " Because," thought he, " they have my name written down in their cursed books, let them have come by it in what manner they may; and with my name and surname, they can come and seize me whenever they like." And as to an asylum, he would not have taken refuge there, unless he had had the constables on his heels. "Because," thought he to himself, "if I can be a bird of the forest, I will not be a bird of the cage." Therefore he had chosen, as his place of refuge, that part of the territory of Bergamo where his cousin Bortolo was established, who, if you remember, had already invited him so often to go there. But how to find the way, that was the difficult point. Left in an unknown quarter of a city, with which he might be said to be entirely unacquainted, Renzo did not even know by what gate to depart, in order to proceed to Bergamo; and even had he known this, he would not have known how to get to this gate. For one momenthe thought of inquiring his road from one of his liberators; yet, in the short time left him to meditate upon his affairs, certain ideas had p...« less