Il Manzoni, always called with the article preceding his last name, whom we imagine as students is a perpetually middle-aged man with a grave and somewhat absent gaze, similar to the one portrayed by Francesco Hayez in one of his most famous paintings. A man who can hardly inspire sympathy, just as his masterpiece, I promessi sposi, can hardly inspire it, which as listless adolescents we sip like a bitter medicine to swallow because “it’s good for you.” But, reading carefully the one thousand eight hundred letters he left us and the testimonies of family and friends, Manzoni turns out to be very different from that. An ironic and affable conversationalist, in the forefront of everything, animated by a burning political fire, as a young man he was rebellious and libertine, remaining restless throughout his existence. Indeed, once he became a writer, Alessandro, let’s call him by his name now, poured his restlessness into his work as few others have been able to do. The Betrothed reflects, in fact, all the passions that stirred an adventurous life full of emotional turmoil: maternal abandonment, fatherlessness, spiritual travail, the civil struggle for a united Italy free from the foreign oppressor. A great popular novel, traversed by an indomitable spirit, capable of penetrating human beings and their hearts. And of still shaking our souls today.