The Saint by Fogazzaro, Antonio, 1842-1911

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Saint, by Antonio Fogazzaro#2 in our series by Antonio FogazzaroCopyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributingthis or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this ProjectGutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit theheader without written permission.Please read the "legal small print," and other information about theeBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included isimportant information about your specific rights and restrictions inhow the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make adonation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971*******These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****Title: The SaintAuthor: Antonio FogazzaroRelease Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8455][Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule][This file was first posted on July 12, 2003]Edition: 10Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SAINT ***Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widgerand the Online Distributed Proofreading TeamSince the condemnation of _The Saint_ by the Congregation of the Index,the publishers of the authorized translation of this novel feel that, injustice to its author, Senator Antonio Fogazzaro, they owe to the publica word of explanation by way of making plain (what the author has inmore than one letter made plain to them) how it comes about that, inspite of the decree of the Index, the Senator sanctions the appearanceof the book in America. The explanation is found in the fact that theAmerican publishers secured, before the sentence of the Congregation hadbeen passed, the sanction for the publication of their translation--asanction which the author, as a loyal Catholic, could not have given

later, but which, once it was given, he did not feel justified inwithdrawing.NEW YORK, July, 1906.THE SAINTBy ANTONIO FOGAZZARONOTE: _The Saint_, though it is independent of Fogazzaro's earlier romances,and though it explains itself completely when read in its entirety,will perhaps be more readily understood and enjoyed, especially in theopening chapters, if a few words are said with regard to certain of itscharacters who have made an appearance in preceding stories by thesame author. All needful information of this kind is conveyed in thefollowing paragraph, for which we are indebted to Mrs. Crawford'sarticle, "The Saint in Fiction," which appeared in _The FortnightlyReview_ for April, 1906:"Readers of Fogazzaro's earlier novels will recognise in Piero Maironi,the Saint, the son of the Don Franco Maironi who, in the _Piccolo MondoAntico_, gives his life for the cause of freedom, while he himself isthe hero of the _Piccolo Mondo Moderno_. For those who have not readthe preceding volumes it should be explained that his wife being in alunatic asylum, Maironi, artist and dreamer, had fallen in love witha beautiful woman separated from her husband, Jeanne Dessalle, whoprofessed agnostic opinions. Recalled to a sense of his faith and hishonour by an interview with his wife, who sent for him on her death-bed,he was plunged in remorse, and disappeared wholly from the knowledgeof friends and relatives after depositing in the hands of a venerablepriest, Don Giuseppe Flores, a sealed paper describing a propheticvision concerning his life that had largely contributed to hisconversion. Three years are supposed to have passed between the close ofthe _Piccolo Mondo Moderno_ and the opening of _Il Santo_, when Maironiis revealed under the name of Benedetto, purified of his sins by a lifeof prayer and emaciated by the severity of his mortifications, whileJeanne Dessalle, listless and miserable, is wandering around Europewith Noemi d'Arxel, sister to Maria Selva, hoping against hope for thereappearance of her former lover."CONTENTSINTRODUCTION (BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER)CHAPTERI.--LAC D'AMOURII.--DON CLEMENTEIII.--A NIGHT OF STORMS

IV.--FACE TO FACEV.--THE SAINTVI.--THREE LETTERSVII.--IN THE WHIRLPOOL OF THE WORLDVIII.--JEANNEIX.--IN THE WHIRLWIND OF GODIntroductionBy William Roscoe ThayerAuthor of "The Dawn of Italian Independence"ANTONIO FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECEISenator Fogazzaro, in _The Saint_, has confirmed the impression ofhis five and twenty years' career as a novelist, and now, throughthe extraordinary power and pertinence of this crowning work, he hassuddenly become an international celebrity. The myopic censors of the _Index_ have assured the widest circulation of his book by condemning itas heretical. In the few months since its publication, it has beenread by hundreds of thousands of Italians; it has appeared in Frenchtranslation in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and in German in the _Hochland_; and it has been the storm centre of religious and literarydebate. Now it will be sought by a still wider circle, eager to see whatthe doctrines are, written by the leading Catholic layman in Italy, atwhich the Papal advisers have taken fright. Time was when it was thebooks of the avowed enemies of the Church--of some mocking Voltaire,some learned Renan, some impassioned Michelet--which they thrust on the _Index_; now they pillory the Catholic layman with the largest followingin Italy, one who has never wavered in his devotion to the Church.Whatever the political result of their action may be, they have made thefortune of the book they hoped to suppress; and this is good, for _TheSaint_ is a real addition to literature.Lovers of Italy have regretted that foreigners should judge hercontemporary ideals and literary achievements by the brilliant, butobscene and degenerate books of Gabriele d'Annunzio. Such books, theproducts of disease no matter what language they may be written in,quickly circulate from country to country. Like epidemics they sweep upand down the world, requiring no passports, respecting no frontiers,while benefits travel slowly from people to people, and often lose muchin the passage. D'Annunzio, speaking the universal language--Sin,--hasbeen accepted as the typical Italian by foreigners who know Carduccimerely as a name and have perhaps never heard of Fogazzaro. Yet it is inthese men that the better genius of modern Italy has recently expresseditself. Carducci's international reputation as the foremost living poet