Further Assaults
Attacks • A hail of
blows
These attacks that I am recounting may seem like fables, but sadly, they
are all too true. Many people witnessed them. Here is an even stranger attempt
on my life.
One August evening1 around six o'clock, I was standing at the
fence that we had put in the Oratory courtyard, surrounded by my young men.
Suddenly a cry went up: "An assassin! An assassin!" And there was a
certain man whom I knew quite well and had even given assistance to.2 He
was in his shirt sleeves and was brandishing a big knife. Rushing wildly at me,
he was shouting, "I want Don Bosco! I want Don Bosco!"
All of us scattered in every direction, and the intruder chased one of the
seminarians, mistaking him for me.3 When he realised his mistake, he
turned and came running furiously in my direction. I just had time to beat a
retreat to the stairs of the old house, and the lock to the gate was barely
secured when the madman reached it.4 He hammered, shouted, and bit
at the the iron bars to open them, to no avail. I was safe inside.
My young men wanted to overpower the unfortunate man and break him apart,
but I repeatedly forbade them and they obeyed me. We sent word to the police, to
police headquarters, to the carabinieri. It was not till 9:30 that evening,
however, that two carabinieri arrested the rogue and took him to the barracks.
Next day, the chief of police sent an officer to ask whether I would drop
the charges against my attacker. I answered that I forgave that assault and all
other injuries. But in the name of the law, I demanded of the authorities
greater protection for the persons and property of citizens. But would you
believe it? At the very same time when I had been attacked,5 as I was
leaving the house, there was my attacker waiting for me a short distance off.
A friend of mine, seeing that I could not expect police protection, decided
to speak to the wretched man.6 "I've been paid," he was
told. "If you give me as much as the others do, I'll go away
peacefully." He was paid 80 francs for back rent, another 80 to book him
into new lodgings well away from Valdocco, and so ended that first comedy.7
The second which I am going to relate was not like that. About a month
after the episode just narrated, one Sunday evening, I was asked to hurry to the
Sardi house near the Refuge to hear the confession of a sick woman who was said
to be dying.
Because of my previous experiences, I asked several of the bigger boys to
come along with me. "There's no need," I was told. "We'll
accompany you. Leave these lads at their games."
This was enough for me not to go alone.8 I left some of them in
the street at the foot of the stairs. Joseph Buzzetti and Hyacinth Arnaud were
on the first-floor landing9 not far from the door of the sick woman.
I went inside and saw a woman gasping as if she were about to breathe her
last. I asked the men in attendance, four of them, to move off a little so that
we might speak of her soul.
"Before I make my confession," she said in a strong voice,
"I want that blackguard there in front of me to take back the calumnies he
has been spreading about me."
"No," one of them answered.
"Shut up!" added another, rising to his feet.
Then they all stood up from their chairs.
"Yes!" "No!" "Watch it!" "I'll strangle
you!" "I'll cut your throat!" These shouts, mixed with horrible
curses, echoed diabolically all over the room. In the midst of that melee, the
light was put out. As the din increased, a hail of blows began to be aimed over
where I was sitting. I had figured out their game right away, namely to jump me.
In a moment, with time neither to ponder
nor to reflect, necessity became
the mother of invention. I
grabbed a chair, put it
over my head, and as I
edged towards the door under that helmet,
a shower of blows from sticks fell with a tremendous racket upon the chair.
Exiting that hotbed of
Satan, I flew into the arms of my young men;10 when they
heard that noise and those yells, they were determined to break in, come
what may.
I had suffered no serious wound. One blow struck my left thumb, which was
exposed against the back of the
chair. The nail and half the
tip were ripped away, so that I carry the
scar to this day. The worst harm
was the fright.
I never could discover the real reason for this persecution, but it seems
that all these attempts on my life were intended
to make me stop, they would
say, calumniating the Protestants. 11
Notes
1. Lemoyne places this episode in the section of
BM IV concerned mostly with 1853; he continues the story of the deranged
man with events from the spring of 1854 (IV, 488-491).
2. The man's name was Andreis. and he had once been a tenant in the Pinardi
house. At this time he lived in the Bellezza house. (BM IV, 488)
3. The seminarian was Felix
Reviglio (BM IV. 489; Bonetti, p. 256).
4. There was a little iron gate at the foot of the staircase of the Pinardi house.
5. About six o'clock on the evening after the assault.
6. Don Bosco's longtime benefactor, Commendatore Joseph Dupre. He
did not act, however, until after still another attempted knifing,
witnessed In- John Cagliero (Bonetti, P-257: BM IV, 490)
7. T. Bosco values these 160 lire at about 650.000 lire (1986), equivalent
to about $450 (SP, p. 200).
8. He had meant to bring two young men; at this point he decided that four
would be better. They were Joseph Buzzetti, Ribaudi, Hyacinth Arnaud, and James
Cerruti. The last two "were so muscular and strong that they could have
felled an ox." (BM IV, 491) Buzzetti, Arnaud, and Cerruti were among the
boys who in 1847 made the first Oratorv retreat.
9. The landing of the second floor (U.S.).
10. Lemoyne tells us that lion Bosco found the
door locked, and "using his extraordinary strength he twisted and tore the
lock away with one hand," the other still holding the chair over his head,
just as Arnaud and Buzzetti crashed their shoulders into the door from the other
side (IV, 492).
11. Sixteen-year-old John Cagliero witnessed a
more explicit connection. Two men called on Don Bosco one Sunday afternoon in
January 1854 while the boys were in church. They noticed the two and was
suspicious; so he eavesdropped. After failing to dissuade Don Bosco from
publishing the Catholic Readings, the visitors pulled pistols on him.
When the conversation in Don Bosco's room grew heated, Cagliero pounded on the
door, ran for Buzzetti, and came back as . Dori Bosco was escorting the two men
out, who were flustered at being caught in the act, as it were. (BM IV, 493).
Other assassination attempt, besides those involving Grigio (next chapter), are recounted in BM IV, 494-405; XIV. 405-407. Father Margotti, editor of L'Armonia, suffered a violent beating in January 1856 (BM IV, 571).