He lived in dread of his son's becoming involved in some of the many
plots then hatching against order and religion, and he repressed with
all his strength Leopardi's revolutionary tendencies, which must
always have been mere matters of sentiment, and not deserving of great
rigor.
He seems not so much to have loved Italy as to have hated Recanati.
It is a small village high up in the Apennines, between Loreto and
Macerata, and is chiefly accessible in ox-carts. Small towns
everywhere are dull, and perhaps are not more deadly so in Italy than
they are elsewhere, but there they have a peculiarly obscure, narrow
life indoors. Outdoors there is a little lounging about the _caffe_,
a little stir on holidays among the lower classes and the neighboring
peasants, a great deal of gossip at all times, and hardly anything
more. The local nobleman, perhaps, cultivates literature as Leopardi's
father did; there is always some abbate mousing about in the local
archives and writing pamphlets on disputed points of the local
history; and there is the parish priest, to help form the polite
society of the place. As if this social barrenness were not enough,
Recanati was physically hurtful to Leopardi: the climate was very
fickle; the harsh, damp air was cruel to his nerves.
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