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nave he stopped a religious, who first said he was not of this parish but, seeing the look in the youth s
eyes, consented and sat in a confessional to hear the penitent.
Padre Emanuele cannot have been very old, perhaps forty, and according to Roberto he was florid,
pink of face, regal, and affable, and Roberto felt encouraged to confide all his sufferings. He told first of
all about the paternal blasphemy. Was this sufficient reason to keep his father from reposing now in the
bosom of the Father, to make him moan in Hell? The confessor asked a few questions and led Roberto
to admit that no matter when old Pozzo died, that event would most likely have occurred while he was
taking the name of the Lord in vain: cursing was a bad habit you pick up from the peasants, and the lords
of the Monferrato countryside considered it a sign of superiority to speak, in the presence of their equals,
with the words of their villeins.
You see, my son, the confessor concluded, your father died while he was performing one of those
grand & noble Acts through which a Man is said to enter the Paradise of Heroes. Now, while I do not
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believe such a Paradise exists, for I believe that in the Kingdom of Heaven both Beggars & Sovereigns,
Heroes & Cowards live together in holy accord, surely our Almighty King will not have denied His
Kingdom to your Father only because his Tongue slipped a bit at a moment when he had a great
Enterprise on his mind, and I would dare say that at such moments a similar Ejaculation can even be a
way of calling God as Witness & Judge of the great Deed. If you are still tormented, pray for the Soul of
your Parent & have some Masses said for him, not so much to persuade the Lord to change his
Verdict as He is not a Vane that turns as the bigots blow but, rather, for the good of your own Soul.
Roberto told him then about the seditious talk of a friend to whom he had listened, and the priest opened
his arms in a disconsolate gesture: My Son, I know little of Paris, but from what I have heard I learn
how many Malefactors, Climb-ers, Abjurers, Spies, Intriguers exist in that new Sodom. And among them
there are False Witnesses, Robbers of Ciboria, Tramplers on Crucifixes, & those who bribe Beggars to
make them deny God, & even people who in Mockery have baptized Dogs.... And this is considered
following the Fashion of the Time. In the Churches they no longer say Prayers, but stroll and laugh, wait
in ambush behind columns to entrap Ladies; there is constant Noise even during the Elevation. They claim
to philosophize & they assail you with malicious Whys; why has God given Laws to the World, why is
Fornication prohibited, why was the Son of God made Flesh; & they distort your every Reply to
transform it into a Proof of Atheism. These are the Fine Wits of the Time: Epicureans, Pyrrhonians,
Diogenians, & Libertines! So you must not lend your Ear to such Seductions, which come from the Evil
One.
As a rule Roberto does not abuse those capital letters in which the writers of his day excelled: but when
he attributes sayings to Padre Emanuele, he employs many, as if the priest not only wrote but also spoke
them, enforcing his words with special dignity a sign that he was a man of great and attrac-tive
eloquence. And in fact, thanks to those words Roberto felt so relieved that, coming out of the
confessional, he chose to linger awhile with the older man. He learned that the priest was a Savoyard
Jesuit and surely not a negligible figure, for he was resident in Casale as observer and envoy of the duke
of Savoy: a normal mission during a siege in those days.
Padre Emanuele carried out his mission gladly: the gloomy siege afforded him opportunity to conduct in a
leisurely way some studies that could not have tolerated the distractions of a capital city like Turin. And,
questioned as to his occupation, he said that he, too, like the astronomers, was constructing a telescope.
You must have heard some talk about that Florentine Astronomer who used the Telescope, or
Spyglass, that hyper-bole of the eyes, to explain the Universe, & how with the Tele-scope he saw what
the eyes had only imagined. I have great respect for this use of Mechanical Instruments to understand, as
they say nowadays, the Res Extensa. But to understand the Res Cogitans, that is to say our way of
knowing the World, we can use only another Telescope, the same that Aristotle formerly used, and
which is neither a tube nor a lens, but a Weft of Words, Perspicacious Idea, because it is only the gift of
Artful Eloquence that allows us to understand this Universe.
Speaking thus, Padre Emanuele led Roberto out of the church and, strolling, they climbed up to the
bastion, to a place that was calm that afternoon, as a muffled sound of cannon fire arrived from the
opposite side of the city. They had before them the imperial encampments in the distance, but for a long
stretch the fields were empty of troops and wagons, and the meadows and hills shone in the spring sun.
What do you see, my boy? Padre Emanuele asked Ro-berto, who, still lacking eloquence, replied,
Fields.
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